


Geometric Plans

by Zilliannie



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Demon Sheep, Gen, Original Character(s), Supernatural Elements, Transcendence AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3879289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zilliannie/pseuds/Zilliannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill has reincarnated again and nothing good will come of it. Especially not for the kid wandering around with a demon's soul underneath her skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unintended Plans

**Author's Note:**

> In which a R!Bill finds themselves in debt and Alcor hides a great number of things (including but not limited to his headache).

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” asked Juniper. Chrys nodded her head for the third time but she could feel her stomach flopping about in nervousness. One more candle and her sister would summon him. It? Him.

Alcor the Dream Demon was bigger, faster, and more cosmically powerful than she could ever dream of. So Chrysanthemum had no idea why he was wasting his time being a petty jerk to a middle schooler.

Oh, Juniper liked him. He ate everything Mom left in the fridge and he upped her memorization skills like he promised he would. Juniper was probably going to be the best actress ever at this rate. It was just Chrys who got the extra Alcor treatment. Not that she’d ever seen him herself.

“Juniper,” Chrys found herself saying after every visit from the demon. “My math book is missing!” or “The computer blocked all my sites!” and then Juniper would laugh like it wasn’t the powerful entity she’d been summoning in  _their_ room who was the problem. Like it wasn’t strange to have a demon going through your things.

“Relax, small fry. Why would Alcor be messing with you?”

She could always tell their parents. Only then Mom and Dad would ask why she was looking up grease fires or what an eleven year old wanted with the history of a child murdering cult. That conversation seemed like a bigger badness than letting a demon steal the best of your silly straw collection every now and then. 

That was until he took her Sacred Geometry book. That wasn’t even hers! It belonged to the library! Taking away borrowed holiness was unacceptable. 

Juniper winked at her playfully and lit the last candle.

“W̧Ḩ̪̬̞Ó̫̦̘͎̰ ̘͎̹̙͈̞̺D̖̺A̗͡R̜͚̗͇͠E͓̳̠͇͖͇̪S ͈̩̦̫̤ͅS̠͍͢Ụ͡M̸͈̬̠̟̭MO҉͙̪̹N̸̤͙̬̥̹… Oh Juniper not again.”

Chrys didn’t jump at the sight of him. If she held on to Juniper a little tighter, well, that was just being smart. Alcor made their room feel small. If she ignored his eyes, his awful wings, she could almost pretend he was a person- but people don’t have voices that vibrate the walls. People don’t seem to ooze an inky blackness from their impossible depths. At least he stayed inside the summoning circle.

“Hey,” Juniper held her hands in the air as Alcor continued to lecture her on proper demon summoning etiquette. “It’s my sister who needs you this time.”

Alcor turned his black and yellow eyes on her and Chrys had the sudden urge to run away. Or punch him in the face. Or both. Instead her body decided to give an old fashioned curtsey. “Hello, Mr. Lord Dreambender, sir. Please stop being a jerkface.”

It was an odd sound he made, like gargling blood. Was he laughing at her? Was that what demon laughter sounded like? “Absolutely not.”

“Well give me back my library book!”

“Why would I take your book?” Alcor floated lazily within the circle.

“That’s what I wanna know,” said Juniper.

“I know you did! You’re the one who’s been blocking my internet and hiding my things!”

“That’s awfully paranoid. Perhaps paranoid children shouldn’t be reading about sacred geometry.”

Chrysanthemum wasn’t crying. It was just the physical personification of frustration falling down her face. “I need it, Mr. Dreambender! Just because you’re- you’re  _you_ and you know what your symbols are doesn’t mean you can take them away from people!”

Alcor tilted his head at an unnatural angle. “This is about symbols?”

“Because that’s where the meaning part comes from! There are all these laws of the universe so you draw a symbol but now I don’t know what the symbol is supposed to be! There’s a plan, there’s a geometric plan for everything, and you took it away! I don’t even know if it’s mine!”

“Whoa,” said Juniper. Which is all anyone ever said when she tried to explain to them the universe was a vast unfeeling weirdness. Just a useless word and a blank expression like Chrys was breaking some unspoken rule of being a person the more she opened her mouth. Except it was Juniper who was going to hurt if she couldn’t figure out the cosmos. She just  _knew_  it. If she couldn’t figure it out they’d just keep being insignificant specks forever. Chrys didn’t have time to be insignificant. There were too many interesting things to do.

Only Alcor didn’t stare at her. He didn’t even seem to cringe. Just waited until she was done shouting and checked the large pocket watch he pulled out of his coat. “I have a deal for you, Chrysanthemum Matsu.”

“NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE MY SOUL. I AM USING IT.”

“STÓP S̡H̷OU̷T͝IN̨G̛.͠”

“YOU STOP SHOUTING!”

Juniper coughed. “Maybe everyone stop shouting? Indoor voices?”

“I’ll find and return all of your missing items in return for a favor,” said Alcor, his arms open, his face in what Chrys figured must have been his attempt at a smile. It was certainly a lot of teeth. She was almost too distracted trying to count them all to listen to the words. Had his eyes turned red? She was pretty sure they’d been yellow before.

“Yeah,” said Juniper. “I’m not a lawyer but you’re gonna have to be more specific than that, friend.” 

She took the deepest breathe she could. Then Chrysanthemum did the stupid thing.  _Just make him go away. Just give it back._  “Deal!”

There was no dramatic puff of smoke or ominous laughter. Just the feel of a gloved hand burning bright against her palm. All the candles went out.

There in a pile where a powerful demon once sat was everything from her books to the pirate eye patch she’d lost in second grade. Homework her teachers marked as “not turned in”. A jumble of possessions half forgotten. 

Chrys sniffed. “He’s probably just trying to trick us into liking him so he can turn us into hobos or something.”

“Well,” said Juniper. “It’s not the worst thing you could be.”

The Internet connection came back too, he’d just changed the password to an elaborate code.

But Chrysanthemum always found her missing items. No matter where she left them during the day they’d appear under her pillow when she woke up in the morning.

Not bad for a jerkface.


	2. Doublethink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alcor re-gifts a cultist, Juniper has a birthday in the background, and R!Bill overcomplicates human interaction in familiar ways.

It had been six months since her deal with Alcor and Chrysanthemum was starting to get used to it. That was probably why she woke up with something goopy under her pillow.

Oh Juniper was still having her weekly sessions with him and Chrys was still avoiding him as much as possible. She wasn’t stupid enough to spend time with a demon on purpose. She hadn’t actually  _seen_  him since they’d shook hands. That feeling of something watching her was probably just paranoia.

But she had liked the way she could leave anything anywhere and have it returned to her again. It had been sort of fun challenging Alcor: her left sneaker returned a day late after she’d hidden it behind another demons symbol, the pencil case she’d left on the Marta returned smelling like copper, her book report returned to her as a festive hat. She’d known he was getting a little annoyed with her when he’d started to return things she didn’t want back like candy bar wrappers. Tests with failing grades she’d intentionally ripped apart and stuffed in the pockets of her cargo shorts. Still, whenever Chrys started to have too much fun with it her brain would remind her of the unpaid debt she owed him and the joy would curdle in her throat. 

She’d begun to keep detailed notes on her phone to see if she could find any limitations or patterns. The books on him in the library were mostly in the 18+ section and the internet could never decide one way or the other the full extent of his deal. Chrys had no interest in demons really, that was Juniper who decided to start summoning after one slumber party, but notes just made sense. 

So really there was no reason for whatever  _this_ was. It smelled like something that had started out bloody had been left to its own devices to rot. It was oozing off of her black hair and in her bed sheets. Was that a tooth? Yes, inspecting it more closely that was definitely part of a human tooth.

Her purple bed spread couldn’t get more ruined. No one would mind that she threw up. At least the sound of it woke Juniper. Her birthday tiara, yesterday connected to her blue curls, was now trapped in her tangles. 

In a fair world getting her hair in order should have been the biggest problem of the day, not helping Chrys deal with whatever this was. Juniper’s eyes went wide. “What did you do?”

“Me? It was your Alcor!”

“Alcor?” at that Juniper held her nose and came over to investigate. “Why would Alcor leave you human parts?”

They both stood in silence for a moment as they tried to think like a centuries old demon.

“Oh!” Chrys was hit with sudden inspiration. “That- That– Jerkbender!”

“What?” asked Juniper, but she was still holding her nose so it came out more as “Vhaaat?”

“They’re nerves!”

–

Last year it hadn’t mattered that Chrysanthemum didn’t like boys. Now she had to like  _something_  or none of the other girls would talk to her.

They didn’t really talk to her much before anyway. No one picked on her or anything, but when she started talking about things that really interested her their eyes would glaze over and they’d nod politely at all the wrong times. Some of the people in class would listen when she talked about her dream of making the bacon fat flame thrower but sooner or later she’d open her big mouth about her theory of numbers and they’d get bored of her too. It was better than what grownups did, which was look horrified, but it still stung a bit.

But now that people were turning twelve the idea of  _like_  liking someone was enough to get her into the main circle again. All she had to do was talk about the right body parts and everyone would giggle and agree with her. 

Lips,  _oh lips giggle giggle._  Some people have lips and they’re so great. Definitely a part of anatomy. Oh boy and stomachs? It’s where food is digested. Definitely a fan of sexualizing the stomach. Oh joy. People and the things what connect to their torsos. A+ all around.

It was just that after a while she had to put some money where her mouth was. She decided to have a crush on Victor, who was in another class, so she wouldn’t have to worry about pretending to moon over him too much. He seemed to have a lot of lip too. That seemed pretty super. She’d made a list for how to most effectively ask him out after a few weeks of observation. Juniper had said it was too complicated but that just showed that Chrys was dedicated. Didn’t people refer to this sort of thing as the chase? She was chasing him really well and she hadn’t even had to talk to him yet.

Yesterday it had all come together. Victor had been sleep deprived making him more open to suggestion. She’d had some of the other girls ask him if he liked her to get him in the right mind set. She’d even worn her lucky t-shirt, the one that said: “Don’t trust atoms! They make up everything!” She was basically golden. All she had to do was slide up to him and ask him to go play holophone with her. There was nothing standing in her way.

Except her, as it turned out. The second he had the option of saying no her whole brain second guessed the plan. Maybe it was a stupid plan. Maybe she should have made him chase  _her_  with an elaborate code or something. There were fifteen steps to the plan and fifteen was a bad number compared to twenty-two or thirty.

“Victor?” she’d asked, leaning against his desk.

He blinked at her awkwardly a moment before swallowing the bite of sandwich he’d been working on. “Y-yeah?”  

Her face had gotten hot. “Where’s the bathroom?”

Going home to a party had softened the blow but she’d been prepared to feel the sting on Monday when she had to explain why she and Victor hadn’t gone out that weekend. She was sort of hoping Juniper’s birthday would be intense enough that she could fake her own death. Or fake Victors death. Someone would be dead.

–

“So you failed at talking to a boy,” Juniper repeated slowly. “So–”

Chrys poked herself repeatedly in the forehead. “So demon logic! Stupid Alcor thinks I lost my nerve! So he returned them to me.”

“Huh,” Juniper eyed her closely before returning her gaze to the pile. “I don’t think these nerves are yours. There’s also a lot of extra junk. He really did a rush job if that was the joke.”

“Juniper!”

“At least you didn’t lose heart.”

“HOW CAN YOU BE SO COOL WITH THIS?”

“Because you’re freaking out enough for two, small fry. What are we going to tell Mom and Dad?” Juniper stuck her tongue out at the stars stuck to her side of the ceiling.

Oh. That was an important question. Maybe even more important than the question of whose nerves were in her bed. After a long pause Chrys began to roll it all up into a pile. She’d keep the tooth though. To be polite. If this is what Alcor the Dream Demon did when he was annoyed being polite was a very good idea. She’d only call him Alcor the Jerkbender in private. Maybe she’d sacrifice him the extra ice cream to make it clear she was sucking up. “I’ll, um, hide it in the closet. Tonight we can bury it in the backyard. Or set it on fire?”

“We’re not setting it on fire.”

“Then we can bury it. Mom and Dad never go in the yard anyway.”

Juniper nodded and began to light her candles to hide the smell. Chrys decided she was going to take a shower. Maybe three. Possibly thirty.

–

The next time she saw Alcor he was playing the violin. It figured. Juniper danced around him gracefully. That figured too. All of the empty food containers had ended up on her side of the room. That was the most predictable of all.

Chrys was really starting to hate her own room. The demonic entity never showed up anywhere else in the house. She plugged her ears in case the music had some kind of magic to it and coughed loudly. 

“Eh! Sorry, small fry!” Juniper waved for Alcor to stop so Chrys could listen again. The violin disappeared up his long sleeves. “And sorry, Alcor. Promised my sister the room would be free again at three.”

“It’s three-fifteen now,” offered Chrys.

“Time is an illusion,” said Alcor quickly. He wasn’t using the full voice. That was almost nice, If she squinted, if not for the natural echo still embedded when he spoke.

Juniper laughed at both of them. “I just need to grab the last tub of ice cream from downstairs and then he’s back to the salt mine.”

Before Chrys could complain Juniper was headed out the door with a friendly wave of her hand, the quick shrug of her shoulder sending the message loud and clear:  _make friends_.

She’d never been alone with Alcor before. He seemed even bigger than he was last time. The suit he wore was very old fashioned now that she was really looking at it. She wondered if Juniper had ever offered to help him upgrade. It was much safer wondering about his clothing than the rest of him.

Alcor looked her over with his glowing yellow eyes. “Who told her about my salt mine?”

“What?”

“Joke.” He reached him arm out and patted the air above her head. She’d never been patronized by a demon before. She was not a fan. Still, she promised she’d suck up so she sucked it up and didn’t say anything about how he was a creepy jerk who needed to go away forever. Receiving no answer Alcor began to examine his claws. “How’s the sacred geometry?”

Was this a test? Was there a right answer? Chrys stared down at her light up sneakers. “Okay. I’ve been looking at hexagons and honeybees.”

“That seems a little pedestrian, but that’s fine for you.”

The shot at her brain power was all it took for her to break her promise. “I don’t know why you’re an extra jerk! You don’t even know me.”

“I̴̷ ̵͟th͡i̷͟n͜͢k̢̧ ͘I̸̛ ̴͝k̛n͡ow̨̕ ̢y̷̢o̶҉u̧̡ p͞r҉̨et͟͜t͟ý͘ ͡w҉e̷̡l̵͜l͜,͡҉ ͜şm̷̀͢a̡͡l̨̀͞l͝ ̴͠f̴̨r͏̷͠y̢͟͠.͡”

Chrys cringed. “Don’t call me that.”

“You’re scared to death of uncertainty.” Suddenly Alcor was behind her. Just as soon as she turned to face him he was gone. “You get annoyed when you’re not the smartest kid in the room.” He was floating above her head. “And you don’t really like your sister that much. Ta-da!”

“Hey!” Chrys clutched her head, feeling an ache coming on. “I love Juniper. And– and everybody hates uncertainty. And also- also shut up!”

Oh god he was going to turn her inside out. Maybe she’d get lucky and he’d turn her into something cool like an eyeball in a jar or a bobcat.

Before she could think of anything better to say Alcor was gone. She was sure she could still hear him laughing at her.

Juniper discovered  _all_  the food in the house was gone. They had to tell Mom and Dad it had been stolen by pixies.

–

Chrysanthemum now had twelve dreamcatchers but she still couldn’t sleep.

“Juniper? Are you still awake?”

“Mmmph,” went Juniper, which was good enough. The bed was too small for the both of them but they made do. Chrys was still small herself.

“How come you like Alcor so much?”

Juniper was quiet for a long moment. “He tries really hard.”

“How come Alcor wants to spend time with you? He doesn’t have to and you’re not good enough at summoning to  _make_  him stay.”

“Eh, I dunno, small fry. He likes people. Or he wants to be the sort of thing that likes people.” 

Chrys thought about that. “ _Or_  he wants something really big from you later so he’s pretending to be your friend now. Then we won’t see it coming when everything gets wrecked.”

Juniper was too asleep to respond to that one. Chrysanthemum stared up at the plastic stars plastered to the ceiling and wondered if dream demons could sleep.


	3. Sleep No More I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Shakespeare is quoted without context and Dipper misses his cue.

Dipper never went looking for Bill, sooner or later Bill would find him with a familiar unabashed glee that transcended the skin suit he happened to occupy. Ian had gotten close to Mizar. Toby had summoned him for help. There had been Seymour the fractured incarnation who attempted to murder him as a thought experiment. Then the cosmic incident he’d had to squash down to keep Bill’s soul from following him home to the Dreamscape. All difficult in their own special way.

So no, there was nothing creepy about watching a little girl sleep.

For one thing she had face planted into her book and now her drool puddle had extended on to her desk. That was just hysterical (human) behavior. For some reason the last several months Chrysanthemum Matsu seemed keen to sleep everywhere but her own bed.

(Matsu. The universe wasn’t even  _trying_.)

She had both eyes. Her parents were hands off in their style but provided for all basic necessities. She appeared capable of love and, more importantly, shame. She also made shrieking sounds at the slightest provocation. There were no negative consequences when he frightened her into her best behavior. Except for making Juniper upset. He would admit to worrying about Juniper Matsu and her terrible sense of self preservation.

Juniper had appeared at just the right time. Dipper hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d made a new human connection until she’d tried to summon him with that pathetic oval.

_“Hello, Lord Alcor, sir. Do you still like desserts?”_

_“Did you summon a demon with period blood?”_

_She’d blinked at him for a long moment, her face was calm and her hands were shaking. “Is that not okay?”_

A pang of nostalgia for Cassie and two lectures on responsible demon interaction later and he’d been stuffing his face full of candy while Juniper tried to memorize lines for ancient plays.  _“I’m good at, like, the modern stuff, Lord Alcor dude. Even Pamela says so. Old is trickier.”_

_Dipper could have left. Instead he sighed. “Well, what’s your character motivation?”_

Chrys almost woke herself up with a high pitched nose whistle, before resting her head onto her arm, the book falling with a small thud to the floor. Dipper went to examine it more closely. A Beginners Guide to Alchemy Symbols? Didn’t this kid ever read fiction?

Every time he’d started to let his guard down around Bill someone got hurt. The last thing this one needed was curiosity about the wider universe.

He placed the pillow under her head and under that, well, she’d clearly lost her marbles. He should return them to her.

\--

At twelve Chrysanthemum thought she’d have her life a little more together but at least she could still watch Juniper act.

Juniper went to a performing arts school in Decatur where the students got to call the teachers by their first names and dance for their final exams. Juniper was a little fuzzy on the details of the Zombie Wars in Florida or golden ratios but they did teach her to deflect inappropriate interview questions and maintain an appropriate online presence.

“Is it starting yet?” asked Chrys. Mom shushed her. Sandwiched between her parents in the busy theatre Chrys was probably the only kid who didn’t get to play with her holophone while they waited. The dress they made her wear itched and the audience was filling in too slowly. Didn’t they know they were supposed to be getting ready for a show?

When the lights finally dimmed, she forgot how to breathe, and when the curtain rose and the stage lights transported them to an undiscovered country, she swallowed, and swallowed, trying to get the sharp edges out of her throat. Witches talked and talked while Chrys fidgeted in her seat. They weren’t as good at pretending as Juniper was. She could still tell that they were students even as they spoke about toil and trouble. They knew the magic of three but they couldn’t get it to sound right.

A rush of air filled her lungs. A person who used to be Juniper walked onto the stage- Macbeth. “So foul and fair a day I have not seen...”

Someday Chrys was going to justify the universe with mathematics as well as Juniper justified it with Shakespeare. Better even. When Chrys did it everything would make sense to everyone.

They’d probably give her an award.

\--

Mom and Dad wanted to wait in the parking lot but Chrys managed to maneuver into the dressing rooms. The trick was to dodge everyone with enough authority to tell you no. She rushed past a half dressed Banquo and a Lady Macbeth kissing a stage hand to find her sister chiseling the bloody makeup off her face.

Juniper had returned to herself. “How was I?”

“YOU WERE GREAT,” Chrys assured her, bouncing on the balls of her feet. The dressing room was loud with the sounds of teenagers so she could shout as much as she wanted. “Totally nuts! I thought you were completely delusional!”

“Well, I wanted a little more nuance than that but thank you, small fry,” Juniper pulled at one of her blue curls and smiled at her reflection in the mirror. “I really think I understood him tonight. I mean, like,  _dude_.”

“I KNOW!”

“I’m going to have to give You-Know-What half a kidney or something at this rate,” Juniper joked.

Chrys swore she smelled a sudden burst of pine needles, but saying so would just make Juniper call her paranoid again. Instead her hands reached over to fiddle with the feathers in Macbeth’s hat. “I mean, the play’s over and you’re already a senior,” she said, her voice pitching higher than she meant it to. “You probably don’t  _have_  to keep summoning him.”

Juniper side-eyed her a moment before frowning. “I want to. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m just  _saying_ ,” Chrys protested, raising her hands up protectively. “You did really good. Also at my school they were talking about all the bad things that can happen if you summon demons--”

Juniper poked her on each palm before raising her index finger to her lips. “Shh, Chrys. Maybe, opStay alkingtay aboutyay ethay emonday?”

“If you don’t want to summon demons you shouldn’t be using codes!” Before Chrys could argue harder Juniper jumped up, grabbed her arm, and propelled them both forward with a sudden burst of speed. Chrys found her voice shrieking before the rest of her brain could catch up. “What are you doing?”

“I want to show you something!”

“Can you show it to me slower?”

Juniper laughed at that and ran faster, not stopping until she pulled Chrys right to the middle of the empty stage. Letting go of her hand Juniper jumped behind her sister and draped her arms around her shoulders. It was so familiar a gesture that Chrys leaned into it, even when Juniper rested her pointy chin on top of Chrys’s head.

“Did you know,” Juniper stage whispered. “That theatres are magic?”

Chrys frowned even though she knew Juniper couldn’t see it. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“It is too, small fry.” Juniper began to spin them in clumsy circles, Chrys’s feet dangling in the air. “You see the more people perform the more energy. The more energy the more a place comes to life.”

“Put me down!” It was going to make her dizzy. Chrys closed her eyes and tried to focus on the words being spoken and now the loss of control. “I don’t know what this has to do with Al--”

Juniper stopped spinning but she still held on to tight. She was being someone else again. Someone who made dramatic monologues for fun. “Shh, it’s up to everyone to bring that kind of magic about, but it can all be totally ruined if one light doesn’t shine right or one prop breaks wrong. Or one actor can’t pretend well.”

“You’re the best actress--”

Chrys could feel Juniper shake her head. “Not with this old junk. You didn’t see the way I butchered it before I asked for help. I was totally wrecking something thousands of years bigger than me. Pamela helped a whole lot but she was disappointed. I could tell I was letting the company down.”

“So you went to talk to something that was there. Bein’ all big already.”

“It turns out he gets kindof twitchy when you ask him if he knew Shakespeare but otherwise, yeah. I want to keep talking to You-Know-What. I owe one for helping me get the magic right. Even if you two don’t see it that way.” She shrugged one of her shoulders. “Plus, hanging out with humans keeps him from eating people.”

Chrys pulled away at that so she could show Juniper her sternest face at the thought but dizzy as she was she just fell to the stage floor dramatically instead. Now all she needed was a nice chalk outline.

“Who’s eating people?” said a voice from the side of the stage.

Juniper properly returned to herself at the sound of it. “No one, Pamela!”

The woman strided towards them with the largest steps. Before Chrys knew it the stranger was staring down at her. Pamela, as Juniper called her, had red lipstick on her front teeth. “I should hope not, darling. Now get that thing off my stage.”

Chrys looked to either side to make sure this stranger making intense eye contact had really referred to her as a thing. Rude. Rather that getting up off the floor she doubled down to lounge.

For her part Juniper laughed nervously. “This is my sister. Chrys, meet Pamela, my director.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “You didn’t see the spinny thing did you?”

Pamela continued to stare, tapping her heels against the stage. “Young lady, do you know you have the aura of a black hole?”

That sounded awesome but-.  “What does that mean?”

“What did you  _think_  though?” asked Juniper. “Did I do alright?”

“You did… adequately with the Bard. Get her out.” Just as quickly as Pamela had entered she was gone again, her long strides taking her back to the dressing rooms to yell at more teenagers.

“Um,” said Chrys. “Did you know she was mean?”

Juniper reached out her hand to help her sister up. “Yeah, she’s mean.”

To prove a point Chrys spun herself one more time to make sure her legs were working properly. “Does she really have The Sight? Does she know you’re talking to demons? How come you’re the one having summoning parties and I’m the one in trouble with your teacher?”

Juniper rolled her eyes. “Today is all anxiety with you, small fry,” she said, but with her signature smile to go with it. “She’s brilliant about shows that’s all. Trying to prepare us for all the wacko directors in our future.”

That wasn’t the same as an answer. “Well, fine. When you’re famous ask her what she meant about my blackhole aura.”

“Will do,” Juniper assured her with a tiny salute with her index finger.

\--

For the fifth time Chrys stared down at her light up sneakers and answered the same stupid question. “That was the last time I saw her, Officer.”

They hadn’t dragged her down to the station for an interrogation. Instead the police had come into her kitchen to ask her nosy questions. Bad things were always invading her spaces.

The whole problem was that Juniper was somewhere else. She’d gone to her cast party and she’d never come back again.

“Is there anything else you need, Officer?” asked Dad. He was so nervous, so worried, his accent had come back. An American citizen for twenty years when things went wrong he always sounded like he’d started speaking English only a few weeks before. When the Officer assured him they were just following protocol he sank deeper and deeper into his chair beside her. She patted his hand.

Meanwhile Mom forgot she was an Orthopedic surgeon and tried to drown the problem in Southern Hospitality. Every officer in the house had been forced to hold a cup of iced tea. She’d even forgotten her wig, leaving her hair natural around her head like a halo.

Truthfully Chrys liked her parents best when they were stoic and somewhere else.

All she had to do was get to sleep that’s all. Just get to sleep and everything would be fixed when she woke up in the morning. She’d made a deal with Alcor that everything lost would be found.

Juniper had been missing for three days now but maybe it was Chrys and the quality of her sleep. She’d look over at the empty bed on the other side of the room and sleep would wander off to do other things.

Three days wasn’t so bad for someone to be declared missing was it?

Unless Alcor was the reason Juniper was missing. He could have tricked her into an alternate dimension or turned her inside out for one of his cults. It seemed like the sort of thing a demon would do.

What was she going to do if the police found the stranger’s nerve endings in the backyard? Juniper had told her not to talk about Alcor with anyone. So she hadn’t. But maybe that wasn’t what Juniper wanted; maybe that was what Alcor wanted. To hog all the information and distribute it only when it caused the most damage.

That night she had a nightmare that refused to keep its shape. She wandered through the mists of Scotland until they transformed into the old red hills of home. A raven flew above her head but she couldn’t hear the warnings it cried since her ears had fallen off. Her hair, her teeth, all fell with each step she took. It was that kind of dream.

S̨̡l̴̨è͟͞e̕p͞ ̷̛n͡ǫ͜ ͢m҉or͏̴͞e͠!̷̴ ̵̀A̡̛l̡̕̕c̴o̢r̛ ͡͡do̕͟e̶͢͏s͞ ̨m̵͜͡u͏̷͘rd̕è̛̕r̷͞ ̛͝s̸̕l̀͢͠ee͡p̛.̵̛

She woke up with a mouth full of cotton, pitying Macbeth more than she had before. Bless his heart he’d done everything according to the whims of fate. All that planning, all that blood sacrifice, ruined because of one man getting born wrong and getting vengeance happy.

And Juniper wasn’t under her pillow.

Fine. Alcor wasn’t going to keep his end of the deal. That was fine. It meant Chrys wouldn’t have to keep her end either. Fine. It was fine.

Demons were useless and unreliable. Juniper should have listened to the PSAs about them. Maybe her fancy performing arts school didn’t hammer it home with the same strength but Chrys had plenty of the jingles permanently in her head. D _emons only want your soul / Never let them reach their goal. / Demons want to eat your skin / Never let a demon win._ Pretty sensible stuff!

No, she was just going to have to rescue Juniper herself.

What did a demon know about siblings anyway?


	4. Sleep No More II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chrys has the wool pulled over her eyes and Alcor sees a play with audience participation.

It was waiting. It had been waiting a very long time.

\--

_Dear Mom and Dad,_

_I’ve gone to rescue Juniper. There are no demons involved. My math homework is done so you can go ahead and turn it in while I’m gone._

_\- Chrys_

* * *

 

If Pamela was surprised to see a kid with a backpack full of supplies and a baseball bat at her door she covered it remarkably well. Rather than saying anything she ran her hand through her grey hair and silently gestured for Chrys to come inside.

“Your house looks like a brain,” said Chrys awkwardly as she was directed over to a lumpy couch. She’d spent the last ten minutes of her walk over practicing how to ask for help with the most authoritative voice but that was what she blurted out at the sight of piles upon piles of creative arts garbage. “Do you really have the Sight or were you lying?”

Pamela sank into the chair across from her. “I suppose you’re not selling cookies, are you?”

“That’s not an answer!” Chrys sprawled herself out. “I’ll get my blackhole cooties all over your things.”

“What exactly do you want, young lady?” asked Pamela, without leaving any room for an answer. “You’re being very selfish. Aren’t your parents dealing with one missing child already?”

“Yes, and I’m working on that, but I need more information before I can form a real hypothesis.”

Pamela frowned. “So you came here?”

Chrys nodded. “You’re the only person I know who’s got the Sight and cares about Juniper.”

“That doesn’t mean I know where she is--”

“But you know magic! You could introduce me to the people who have the power to find her without getting creepy!” Chrys had too much energy for her own good, before she could make sense of herself she was standing and waving her arms about- the bag of books on magic and mathematics left on the floor with a dramatic sort of thump.

Pamela only sighed. “They’re not going to want to talk to you, darling I’m not trying to be cruel.”

“Why not?”

“Well I don’t usually enjoy telling children bad news, it’s terrible for my constitution-”

“I mean why won’t they want to talk to me.” Adults were useless sometimes.

“The people who work with magic in Atlanta are not the sort who like noisy questions,” said Pamela. “Especially from a little girl who gives off such a strange...ness.”

“My strange wouldn’t matter if I had a friendly guide.”

“Hmm, when I was a teenager I fell in love with this scrumptious boy names Lyle.”

Well that was a tangent. Chrys stared at her. “... Cool.”

“It wasn’t that I liked him that much really, but my parents hated him and that made him even hotter,” said Pamela. Her eyes got glossy and she licked her lips. “I got so caught up in the argument I agreed to run away with him.”

Oh, the police had wondered about that too. “Juniper didn’t run away.”

“Are you sure? If she did have a love in her life would she tell you?”

“No,” said Chrys. She’d made her stance on ickiness very clear. “But I know she didn’t!”

“How?”

Chrys sank back down into the lumpy chair, her fists clenched at her sides. “Because she wouldn’t. Juniper can’t be an actress if she runs away from home. You don’t give up on all your plans just for a dumb rebellion.”

“Not everyone is that logical you know.”

“Well, Juniper is.” She had to be. Chrys shook her head like she could force the idea out of it. “Just help me explore today! I’ll go home tonight!”

“Fine. Fine.” Pamela rubbed her forehead. “Has anyone told you you’re a very anno- exhausting child?”

It stung a bit to hear it right to her face but not as much as it used to. Chrys nodded firmly. “Yeah, pretty much everybody. At least I can use it for good.”

Chrys was the sort of person who showed up unannounced and annoyed people.

Juniper was the sort of person who came home straight from Drama Club on school nights to keep an eye on her sister. She was the sort of person who told everyone else to relax when the universe was too vast and summoned demons just to see if she could.

Juniper was the sort of person who got rescued from things.

\--

Chrysanthemum had thought the Magic District of Atlanta would look different. Like in a story. She’d sort of imagined everything would look like Alcor had decorated it with fancy dark colors and too many open flames. Really, it looked like every other part of Atlanta with flowers out front of each store and friendly brick buildings. It was just that the stores inside the buildings advertised shape changing drinks, or multi eyed animal companions, or candles for summoning things into your wilting garden. It didn’t feel alive the way Juniper had talked about.

Pamela was right about the people’s conversational skills though.

“Have you seen my sister? She’s Brown, and Asian, and she’s got blue hair!”

The mermaid in the wheelchair flipped her hair instead of looking at the picture. “No, I haven’t seen anyone like that.”

“If Alcor the Dreambender were going to steal a person where would he put them?”

The man who sold mind altering crystals stroked his pink beard. “Nowhere a kid with an aura like yours should go.”

“What’s wrong with my aura? What does that even mean?”

The voodoo woman poked her with a pin. “It means don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, Goldie.”

Seven hours in and Chrys was ready to throw a fit at these people. Sitting on a bench outside the third shop in a row advertising fortune telling she stared at the vacant lot next door and imagined everyone set ablaze in the heat.

Pamela, for her part, had gotten Chrys ice cream. “I told you so, young lady. Why don’t you let me call your parents and I’ll take you home?”

Chrys took the cone and watched as the vanilla dripped down her fingers. “I haven’t gotten enough information to form a hypothesis yet.”

“You do know there are police officers in the world? I’m not trying to hurt you, darling.”

“I know,” she sighed, after a moment of chewing on her lower lip. “I just gotta fix it.”

Taking a deep breath Chrysanthemum stood up, collected her things, and headed for the next shop-

Wait. Was that a sheep? A sheep in the middle of Atlanta?

Yes, that was a black sheep peeking out from behind the corner store. It had too many eyes but it was definitely a sheep like entity. Glaring out at her only to run when her sight locked on to it. “Hey! Wait!”

Before she knew it Chrys was running after the animal, Pamela’s surprise left behind, her belongings keeping her from picking up real speed. The sheep darted past the creepy apothecary selling severed hands and almost in and out of reality and still Chrys tried to keep up as the animal avoided her footsteps.

Was Alcor spying on her? Weren’t sheep one of his symbols for when he was tricking kids into giving their dreams away? She couldn’t let it escape!

There were grown up voices shouting at her but Chrys couldn’t give up now.  Finally getting close enough to really see it properly Chrys dropped her things against the Atlanta pavement and lunged like someone who did well in gym class.

Tackling the sheep was a mistake. It had very strong teeth as it turned out and a willingness to bite the button off of her shorts. She was left to rip at it’s wool while it made the most awful sounds.

“Are you a demon sheep? Do you know Alcor?”

“B̡áa̴a͠,” said the (definitely demon) sheep before it’s head butted in to her stomach. Her fists full of wool she fell to the ground, the creature running for only a moment before disappearing from her human sight.

Chrys was now embarrassingly sweaty, her clothing had pieces missing, and she was no closer to finding Juniper than she had been before bothering black sheep about its intentions. The wool was sort of nice though. It felt so gentle against her skin now that it had been separated from a terrible animal-like entity.

She recollected her things, the eyes of Magical Atlanta were on her but they did nothing to help, and began the walk back to Pamela. Her bat had almost rolled into a storm drain but Chrys managed to fish it out before it went over the edge.

Pamela was where Chrys had left her, only now she was properly annoyed instead of patronizingly peeved. “Where were you?”

“I saw a sheep,” said Chrys.

“No,” Pamela informed her. “You glared off the distance and ran away.”

“I did see a sheep, here!” Chrys held out the wool but Pamela continued on her speech about dealing with bad situations and behaving appropriately. So Chrys stared down at her prize and- huh. Noticed how grey her shoes looked through the spaces in the wool she was holding.

When she looked at it with wool over her eyes the world went grey and there was an enormous theatre. When she removed it the world was full of color and the lot was empty again.

“Huh,” she said.

Pamela glared at her. “Are you listening to me?”

“No,” Chrys returned the wool to her eyes and went back to staring. “Sorry. Give me a sec.”

The theatre was the biggest building in the area and glittered gold in the monochrome world it inhabited. It reminded her of a castle from a fairy tale. Maybe it wasn’t Alcor’s fault after all, because rather than his stars adorning the windows and the banners attached to the greek pillars everything was covered in triangles. But then wasn’t there a triangle on Alcor’s summoning circle too?

 _Tonight at 8,_  advertised the biggest banner of all,  _come one come all to MACBETH._

_Hashulhqfh vrphwklqj rog, Fkubvdqwkhpxp._

Well, she knew where she’d be going.

Good demon sheep.

\--

Bad demon sheep. Dipper glared at Blueberrybelle but the creature was unrepentant. “What were you thinking?”

“B̡áa̴a͠á.”

“No, Toby was nice to you. Chrysanthemum doesn’t know who you are.”

“B̲̣̩̲͉̺͢a̗̩̙͖͚̦͖a̮̰̗̺͔̺a̫͎̳̘̤a҉͈̦̮̣!͙̱̣̗̗”

Dipper glared over at the theatre squatting in his dreamscape. Like the Wandering Shack he could feel something peeking out to stare back at him, which would be fine if he’d seen it before. Or if it weren’t covered in the symbol of Bill Cipher and trying to tempt Chrysanthemum Matsu inside its halls.

When he began the process of reworking it, to see if Juniper was inside, it had materialized yddgrasil into its walls.

This whole situation was going to give him a headache.

“B̤̲̮͔͘ͅa͎a͎̲̝̣a̦̙͙!͔͓͡” went Blueberrybelle, reminding him of the task at hand.

“No, it’s fine,” he sighed lightly. “I’ll handle it.”

If Chrys wanted to try and rescue her sister so badly he was going to let her.

\--

She’d had to hide from Pamela, who wanted to call her parents and take her home, but she’d managed to stay near the lot where the invisible theatre was for its showing. By the time she got there after hours of hide and seek in the Georgia sunshine with her bag on her back, well, if it were a normal show she’d worry about falling asleep during the boring bits. As it was she was hoping maybe the creepy theatre would just give her Juniper if she asked nicely. At least she’d managed to wrap the wool around her head so it stayed in place.

Chrys definitely hadn’t been expecting her well dressed demon to show himself now, standing in front of the theatre looking for all the world like she was late to their meeting.

“Alcor!” she was almost relieved to see him until his yellow eyes met her, then she remembered to be frightened “I mean, Lord Alcor, sir!” Then she remembered to be angry. “What is wrong with you?”

He tilted his head at an unnatural angle. “Wrong with me?”

“You promised to find all of my missing things!” Chrys broke eye contact to look down at her shoes. Looking up at him with the wool over her eyes just made her head hurt and he was too powerful to see through. “But Juniper is still lost. She might be lost in there and-”

“People aren’t things,” said Alcor. “Hasn't anyone taught you that?”

“I didn’t mean it that way!”

He examined his claws. “Í ̪͈̺̞̲̩͠d͓͉̞o̷͕̼̥͉͔͚n͈͙ͅ’̡t̨ ̙͇̙c̠͖͚a͙͕̞͉r͔͢ͅe͏̜̼ ̛̩̯͔̼͕̣͎wh̭́a̟̥̟̬̫̬̖͝t ̡̠̪͔y̷o̡̩̬̩͚͉̲͉u̙̗̝̦͜ ̦̹͇̠̝m̥̰̯̖̩̲͍e͎͇̯͍͇a̙̖̮̲̲͠ͅn͚̮̱̖.̛͇̪̙̭ͅ”

In some ways this was better than talking to Pamela or the police. Alcor wasn’t going to pretend to feel pity for the weird kid whose sister was missing.

Chrys closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to pretend he was just a schoolyard bully and not a monster.  “Then get out of my way.”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here or-”

“No.” He wouldn’t tell her the truth anyway.

Crys picked up her bat from her bag and began the long walk into the open doors of the theatre that didn’t properly exist. After a moment Alcor floated along behind her. She was more scared of him than this place anyway. A place didn’t have claws.

The moment they got inside Chrys felt the bile rise up her throat. Everything reflected back at her at the incorrect angles. The laws of causality lay mutilated at her feet as staircases twisted up into themselves only to vomit out gold bricks from cavernous maws. Her legs wanted to give out, shaking beneath her. It was too big and-

“Better to leave it to your human eyeballs,” said Alcor carefully. “Now that you’re here.”

Chrys stuffed the wool back into the pocket of her shorts and tried again.

The theatre was covered in gold leaf, warped mirrors, and marble statues. Everything shined like it had been freshly polished. She decided she was imagining the breathing sound. She decided it was just the air conditioner. Definetly.

“Is there a concessions-?” she asked, but before she could finish the question she could see the sign for it right in front of her. Like it had always been there. “Actually I’m not hungry.”

Alcor wasn’t listening. Instead he had floated over to glare into the long mirrors against the side walls as if willing his reflection to change. After a moment the golden triangles against the mirror edges twisted themselves into stars with a metallic crunch, only to return to what they were the second Alcor smiled in satisfaction.

Maybe Alcor wasn’t as in control here as she’d thought.

Chrys coughed politely. “In alchemy stars are supposed to be a bunch of triangles put together. So in a way your symbol is a lot of triangles all the time.”

He didn’t seem to appreciate her helpful commentary. Alcor flicked the shards of glass in her direction. She stuck her tongue out at him.

The lights blinked. Deep red curtains opened on their own revealing the main theatre space.

Time to go inside, said nothing. Nothing at all. So the fact that she heard it clear and crisp as a dollar bill was a weirdness Chrys was going to have to accept.

The inside of the real theatre space looked- looked just like Juniper’s high school auditorium actually. Only instead of a proper audience there were only small groupings of skeletons.

“This way!” she knew better than to try and pull on Alcor but she rushed over to what she knew was the perfect seat right in the middle. Alcor folded his wings daintily to rest on the arm rests before taking the seat beside her. He placed his feet on top of her backpack but otherwise waited patiently.

Her clothes stuck to her skin wrong and the theatre was too empty. The skeletons moved, speaking to each other too softly for Chrys to make out, but the place itself stayed empty. Alcor didn’t bother to make conversation.

When the lights finally dimmed, she forgot how to breathe, and when the curtain rose and the stage lights transported them to an undiscovered country, she swallowed, and swallowed, trying to get the sharp edges out of her throat. It felt the same as it had the last time. The place didn’t change the words.

The actors were dead. She could tell they were dead, Alcor went stiff at the sight of them so he knew too, it was only the actors themselves who kept talking and walking around. Chrys could see into the 2nd witches insides and still she delivered the lines with a dignity that commanded attention.

A rush of triumphant nausea filled her stomach. A person who used to be Juniper walked onto the stage- Macbeth. “So foul and fair a day I have not seen…”

“Juniper!” Chrys jumped up in her seat. “Juniper, it’s me! JUNIPER!”

The actors continued on with the scene. Only the skeletons in the audience noticed a disturbance and they shushed her. “Oh shut up! You haven’t even got lips.” She continued shouting.  “JUNIPER! JUNIPER!”

“Try throwing your shoes,” suggested Alcor.

Chrys sat down again to remove her sneakers. She stood up on the armrests, careful to avoid Alcor’s wings, only to realize the stage was too far away. She’s hit a light or another member of the audience.

She offered the shoe to Alcor carefully. “Will you throw it, sir? It needs to hit.”

Alcor had really great aim. It should have hit Lady Macbeth square in the jaw. Instead it smacked against a wall of blue electricity and fell down uselessly back into the audience.

Chrys tried shouting again. “Juniper!”

“It seems there’s a fourth wall in place,” said Alcor, his face scrunched up like he was solving a difficult word problem.

“Could you get past it?”

He tossed her left shoe with the same skill only for the same thing to happen- this time the electric blue wall ricocheted the shoe back in their direction, only for Alcor to catch it in his hat. He frowned. “Yes.”

Chrys imagined Juniper going through scene after scene of her show until her feet bleed beneath her and her heart gave out. She imagined Juniper turning into the other actors, then a skeleton, then nothing at all.

Macbeth was conflicted about killing Duncan. Juniper got all the lines perfectly.

Leaving her backpack behind Chrys held her bat close and ran down the aisle to the stage. Tentatively she tapped the side of her bat to the stage. The blue electricity hissed and sizzled against it in annoyance but stayed strong as ever.

So instead of beating the wall she pushed the bat sideways- to see if she could go through the wall. Just a crack. The tiniest crack was all she needed.

“Juniper!” She shouted, as the wall hissed against the sides of her bat, turning it to black ash against her fingers.

Macbeth kept going on his terrible destiny. Juniper blinked.

Chrys gave up on shouting words and just made any sound she could think of to get attention. She could do this! She was very annoying!

Juniper missed a cue. The actor next to her had to guide her forward upstage.

Still Juniper blinked, and blinked, like there was something stuck deep in her eyes.

The bat broke apart uselessly. Alcor watched this display from his seat but stayed where he was.

So Chrys reached out to pull at the cracks in the wall of energy with her fingers. Her hands were fine, it only felt like pushing them against the stove.

The sounds of her shrieks made Juniper squint into the audience. “Chrysanthemum?”

Chrys reached out her hand and Juniper bent down to reach it; her fingers were cool even as Chrys boiled against the heat of the electricity.

“You know me!” shouted Chrys. She had to  _had to_  know her.

“I… missed my curfew,” said Juniper.

Before Chrys could tell her it was okay there was a rumble from nowhere.

The wall was gone. The theatre broke apart beneath their feet leaving only an inky blackness behind. Chrys fell, there was no choice but to fall, into the nothing that now surrounded them on all sides.

Juniper kept hold of her hand and they both screamed- the only light coming from Alcor’s eyes as he floated above them and watched them fall.


	5. Sleep No More III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chrys discovers the art of kintsugi, the joys of alchemy, and makes a decision. Alcor almost has a good time and Juniper doesn’t get to name a skull.

Then she woke up. That was the important part. This was happening and Chrys was very awake. Reality was a Sentient Stage that ate Juniper whole and dumped them… here.

When Alcor’s eyes were too far away to see and the falling had stopped they had landed in a dragon’s hoard of mannequin parts, duct taped objects that stuck in odd directions, and rejected glittering clothing.

“Props and Costumes Department,” muttered Juniper.

It reminded Chrys of Pamela’s house. Just a mess of creativity with no logic or reason to anyone but the original mess maker. Alcor made messes too but that was just to be cruel. This was just odd. Off. Not quite right.

Her knees were skinned and her arms felt warm from phantom burns but Chrys was okay. More than okay. She’d been right. She found Juniper!

Their arms were still entwined from their fall so moving into properly embracing her sister here on the ground was easy. Juniper's costume was heavy enough to hide any tears in its velvety shoulders. If Juniper took deep breathes as she reached into their hug Chrys could pretend not to notice.

“How did you find me?” Juniper asked into Chrys’s hair.

Chrys broke contact so she could poke her sister in the stomach. “Find you? How did you find this!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, smallfry!”

They stood up on shaky legs, stretching forward in the cluttered space, Chrys’s foot caught in the tooele of a pink tutu. “Door?”

Juniper nodded as they both felt along the walls for an exit. “Everybody went to the cast party, right? We were having burgers and junk when I saw this place from the window.”

It hadn’t been next to any resteraunts when she’d seen it but Chrys didn’t mention that. “Then what?”

“Well I thought I knew every theatre worth knowing in Georgia! I was just going to poke my head in, you know, see what it was about,” Juniper bit her lip. “Only then it asked for you. That’s what everything gets a little… fuzzy.”

“For me?”

Juniper’s voice was almost too soft to hear. “It said… it said Alcor had murdered-”

“MURDERED ME?”

“Murdered sleep? No, I’m sorry I can’t remember what it said,” Juniper closed her eyes again. “Maybe it was just Shakespeare.”

Well, that just meant it stunk to be King Duncan, but they knew that already.

The walls felt leathery. Chrys didn’t want to touch them anymore. She just needed a plan. She was usually pretty good at those only-- “My bookbag!”

“Your bag?”

The last Chrys had seen it Alcor had been balancing his feet on top of it. “I had a whole bunch of stuff in my bookbag and - Dads bat!”

“You brought Dads bat with you?” Juniper squinted again. “That’s what you were holding when you shouted at me. I promise if we get out of it I’ll tell him it died for a good cause, smallfry.”

“When. When we get out,” Chrys said firmly.

Juniper paused a moment too long before nodding. “Right. Maybe there’s something in here we can use.”

Chrys wasn’t sure she wanted to dig through the collection of things but Juniper was right about it being their best bet. They needed a plan. A real plan with multiple steps and an understanding of a bigger picture. Instead Chrys reached past a layer of cobwebs to shove warm mannequin parts around. Could be there was a trap door beneath them for escape.

“Maybe not costumes,” said Juniper as she held up something that might have once been a toga. “This stuff is old.”

“Costumes can be old,” said Chrys.

Juniper wrinkled her nose before discarding the toga and picking up a corset. “I just mean theatres are usually more careful with costume stuff. Pamela freaks out if I don’t hang my costume up properly. This is like the piles actors leave their real clothes in. Just, uh, more.”

So that toga belonged to a real person? Then this place was old, really really old, and hadn’t Juniper said Alcor had gotten upset at the implication he knew Shakespeare? Togas were way older than Shakespeare. What was before Alcor?

When Chrys grew up she was going to spend all of her time in brand new laboratories with state of the art equipment and no history at all.

Juniper shook the glitter out of several outfits before blowing on it, shaping them into multiple directions. Chrys tilted her head. “What are you doing?”

“Making a summoning circle,” said Juniper. “Maybe there’s something here I can draw with to, like, let Alcor know where we are.”

Chrys stomped her foot right through an artifact. “No way! Alcor could have saved us a billion times over and he didn’t. If I were a demon and people kept trusting me after I did that junk I wouldn’t even feel bad eating them.”

“Eating,” said a voice from the pile of props. “Mmm miss eating.”

Both girls shrieked but it was Chrys who jumped into the mess to find the, the, skull!

Yes, it was a skull, a skull so old that the jaw jutted out at an odd angle and the colors were all blotchy. No one seemed to have told it so though. Chrys was certain it was trying to grin sheepishly at both of them. Too bad she was sick of sheep. She held it up and out gingerly instead. “How do you talk?”

“Also, dude,” said Juniper. “Who, what, where, when, and why with the talking!”

“Mmm sorry,” said the skull. “Thought you two wanted to get out.”

Chrys shook it. “Yes, what do you know about it?”

“Well, Mmm figured everybody wants to get out,” said the skull in the same tone again. “They just don’t usually.”

“How long have you been here?”

“No,” said Juniper. “Where is here? Can you be specific, dude?”

“Is it Alcor?” asked Chrys before it could answer.

The skull stared at them. “Who’s Alcor?”

Oh boy. “Who’s giving this place power?”

“He’s strong enough to be powerful all on his lonesome, puellae, there just isn’t anyone left.”

“Left?” asked Juniper.

“To tell him he can stop, Miss.”

Juniper sighed. “Well, can you tell us how to get out of here?”

The skull rocked itself back and forth. “Ask.”

“Ask?”

“Stage!” shouted Chrys. “I want to leave now!”

“Please!” added Juniper. She tapped Chrys lightly. “Try to be polite to things bigger than you, kiddo.”

There was a doorframe. There had always been a doorframe. Chrys wasn’t sure how she’d missed it before. She rubbed the top of the skulls head. “Thanks, skull.”

Juniper stared at the skull more carefully now, crouching down to look into the eyes it didn’t have. “What’s your name?”

“Mmm don’t remember anymore.”

“Dorabella!” said Chrys immediately. “I’ve always wanted a pet named Dorabella!”

“Come on, smallfry. Cat Dorabella and gerbil Dorabella suffered enough,” said Juniper, lifting the skull from Chry’s hands to posture with it. “How about Virgil? You are going to be our guide. Or Yorick! Dude, you so look like a Yorick.”

The skull chattered its teeth for a moment. “Mmm liked Dorabella. Less pressure with Dorabella.”

Chrys stuck out her tongue and tied Dorabella to her belt loops with the strings from the corset. They headed for the door.

There was no away. Away was just farther inside.

\--

Dipper had been a demon for a very long time now. He wasn’t having fun being bothered by something with no manners and no place to keep its brain.

When was the last time someone had been able to trap him? It had been at least a few centuries. Dipper watched as the walls rearranged themselves, trying to move faster than him, failing by another blink each time.

“I’m going to find your center,” he told it carefully. “I̡͘'̶m̀͠ ̵̕g҉ơ̕͢i̴ń̛͏g͠ t̢̀o̢͢ ҉̨t̕͟ȩ̷͘ąr̸ ̷i̢t͘ ͏o͘u҉͡t̡.”

**You’re going to try.**

He knew he could do it with a little time on his side. Still, having a duo of distractions wandering could only help him slice this problem properly.

Not a sacrifice: a strategy. (Would it really be so terrible if he left them here?) He’d find the girls when it was done. That would be the right thing to do in this situation.

Dipper felt the laughter boil out of his throat as he sliced into molten gold walls.

\--

There was that terrible sound again. Something was laughing too hard.

“Dorabella, are you sure this is the right direction?” Chrysanthemum stared at the wallpaper and watched it move into new patterns the harder she stared at it. It had started out as the same triangle pattern that was on everything but now it seemed to be favoring flowers.

“Mmm sure!” said Dorabella.

Juniper cursed lightly under her breath as her head bumped against the low ceiling. “Well nothing’s tried to hypnotize or harm us so I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” said Chrys. It was almost… boring. She still felt achy, her sense of time separated from the rest of her, but there was nothing really to react to. Just the sound of her feet against hardwood floors as she inched closer to whatever happened next.There wasn’t even a puzzle to solve- except the one she already had that was too big for her head. Alcor would probably call her selfish again for wanting to be attacked by a sentient place. “This is fine.”

Twice she thought she saw a boy her size floating just ahead of them but he disappeared when she blinked. Chrys liked his hat. They kept walking. Was it wrong to be bored? She just wanted something to happen. Anything really.

The second the thought properly entered her head the walls started to narrow.

“Whoa,” said Juniper lightly. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”

The skull swung itself back and forth. “Nope! Nope!”

The walls didn’t seem to believe it as they pressed closer and closer together until the hallway itself was nothing but a box to hold them in. Then it against them into, into, another stupid triangle!

Chrys took a deep breath and pulled the wool over her left eye. The feeling that she was seeing more than humans could comprehend came back, the hallways squishing them turned from yellow into a multitude of colors she couldn’t name, but above her-- the world reached out into a sky bright with stars. “The ceiling!”

“What?”

The walls were too close for arguments. “We need to break through the point on the ceiling!”

They shoved against the lowering ceiling, Chry’s arms glowing with the warmth of blue flames they’d fought before, their fists beating against sturdy material even as her covered eye saw nightsky. Until finally the ceiling began to break apart.

It was Juniper this time who shimmied her way up through the crack in the universe, reached her arm down, and pulled Chrys up to whatever happened next.

They were both covered in flakes of drywall but that wasn’t a real problem.

“Huh,” said Dorabella, which was not encouraging.

With her wool eye all she could see was stars reaching out into infinity. With her human eye the world was high noon sunshine and fresh air. They stood on the stones of a giant atrium with glass above them and trees around them. The hole they had made in the floor corrected itself. No chance of moving backwards.

Chrys took off the wool and stared down at the floor. Each stone had a symbol carved into it.

“What is that?” Juniper held her hands up and continued to look in all directions. On the other side of the atrium was a set of glass doors.

Dorabella bounced on its string. “Alchemy?”

The alchemy symbols glowed invitingly. Chrys was a very logical person, so the instinct to poke them must have been the sensible thing to do. “I was just reading about this.”

She stepped on the symbol, only for the whole floor, the glass ceiling, to turn to stone with a suddenness that exceeded what her eyes could see. So each symbol had a reaction. Magic.

Chrys really really wished she could remember what the symbols for the stuff like Arsenic was. “I can do this,” she said. “I can get us to what happens next. We just gotta step on the right thing.”

“Are you sure?”

Yes, because she’d been sure of everything up until now and if she stopped being sure she was going to sit down in the middle of the disaster zone and sob. Yes, because she decided she was the sort of person who could wander around and rescue people. Yes, because she was smart. Yes, because she was right. Chrys tried to make her ‘yes’ tighten her shoulders and jumped forward towards the doors to the . Everything turned to gold, even the plants, and after a moment Juniper followed behind her. With each step the symbols shimmered slightly as she glared at them.

After a moment of debate Chrys stepped on ⊛ for magnesium (rather than the one for Zinc) and watched the walls change again. The ceiling readjusted and they were yanked up to it with a sudden force.

“Magnesium! Not magnets! Magnesium! That’s wrong!” Chrys shouted as her back pressed into the ceiling. “We’re not wearing any metal anyway! Stop that!”

Dorabella screamed less like it was in danger and more like he was on a rollercoaster. Which was fair. This would be so fun if it wasn’t so murdery!

Apologetically reality reasserted itself and lightly dropped them back to the ground where they both landed heavily on the ☿ symbol before Chrys could think what that meant. Mercury! The ground went oozy against their feet. The metal would not keep it’s shape and the walls sank around them as mercury came down from the ceiling. All other symbols floated against it with no interest in keeping in place so she could stomp them. They did not sink but there was no way to keep their footing against this new substance. It was almost like bouncing against a water bed.

“Chrys!” Juniper reached out to hold on to one of the plants but it too turned to mercury the moment she touched it. Instead she took hold of Chrys’s shoulders and pulled her close to dodge falling Mercury. It wasn’t working. Dorabella bounced on their string and tried to hide in her pocket.

“What about that one?” Juniper pointed forward to a symbol just out of reach.

“Transmutation? I dunno what it’s gonna transform into!”

Juniper stared at her. “Not mercury!”

Chrys reached out for the symbol as it slipped farther away from her fingers. The vapors in the air were making her dizzy but still she stretched until she reached the sign.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the atrium returned to what it had been when they’d first arrived. The trees shook themselves like mangy dogs before straightening out again. What had mutated?

“Chrys…”

It was her. She was what was transformed from the mercury. Up past the electric blue burns were lines of gold flat as freckles embedded into her skin. As if she had been broken into pieces only to be repaired with gold seams. Juniper sneezed at the sight of her.

Chrys felt her face but she couldn’t feel if it had changed. “How do I look?”

“Um. Expensive.”

She could live with that. When there was time she would look in the mirror and shriek at the sight of herself but for now-  “We should keep going.”

Only all the symbols had changed: they were all just triangles.

What was the triangle symbolic of again? She knew it was more than one thing and they all came together for the star. Only there were triangles everywhere in this place. What if it summoned something bigger? Which direction was water again? And did it make a difference if there was a line through it? Was that one a right angle or were they all equilateral? She wasn’t supposed to take geometry until high school.

There was a sharp sound above them. Alcor bumped against the ceiling, his claws crunching through the glass, smaller than he’d been last time she’d properly seen him. He was the boy who was floating through the walls of the theatre on their walk! He’d been dressed differently then but now in the light she could still see the continuity. He always had the same face.

“Alcor!” Juniper jumped up at him. “There you are, dude! Come on down!”

“No! Stay up there!” she glared at Juniper. “Stop talking to demons.”

Dorabella tilted itself. “That’s Alcor?”

Instead of breaking through to join them Alcor waved a few more times. He drew hearts into the glass. That was just dumb. There wasn’t a heart symbol in alchemy and all the rules had changed anyway. Again he pointed his claw to the heart he drew in the glass before waving his arms around. Chrys and Juniper squinted up at him. He sighed lightly like they’d done something wrong before twisting himself to shout. “Stay right there! I’m going to get at its heart. Don’t move!”

He was speaking normally again. Why was he doing that? This seemed like a situation for the full brunt of demon voice.

Wait, was Alcor saving the day? He’d let them fall and now he was being helpful?

It wasn’t enough. This place was a problem but she didn’t have enough information to solve yet. Alcor would just break the Sentient Stage without explaining the logic of the location. She wouldn’t have control over anything. She’d messed up, she’d really really messed up, but that didn’t mean Alcor got to fix everything when she had decided to mount the rescue mission.

They would never know for sure how much of it was his fault.

Chrys took a deep breath and pressed down on the triangle before she could remember what a bad decision she was making. A fire bloomed in the spaces between her and Juniper, the floor reached up for her, and she leaned into it’s embrace.

“Chrys!”

“What̀ a҉rę ̴you d͟oi̧n̕g͜?͠!”

**ALCOR HATH MURDERED SLEEP-**

Well, sleep was making a comeback. Her mind felt drowsy already.


	6. Sleep No More IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a star is born.

Somewhere else Alcor and Juniper made their way to the heart of the theatre. Right here Chrys had fallen through the floor for a second time only to find herself in a new kind of darkness.  


She was so comfortable that she could not bring herself to be frightened by the pale arms around her. Chrys blinked, only to realize there was no change between open and closed eyes, and tried to shift to look at the person holding her in their lap. 

“I need to go,” she told him. “I need to go right now.”

“Shh,” he said. His one good eye glittered at her. “The show’s about to start.”

Yes, the show. It was an old style television they stared at, maybe from the early 3000s, and it played cartoons for her when her mind started to wander. 

_Mizar the Magnificent will be back after these messages..._

The television was too bright but she still couldn’t bring herself to look away. Sometimes the action was interrupted by news bulletins about eccentric criminals but it wasn’t bad. The strange man was good at holding people. He was too skinny to really be comfortable but he was warm and his edges were soft enough to lean into. When the episode was over another began. They must have watched five before she could blink herself back into questions. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. In the light from the t.v she could see he had light blonde hair, hair he ruffled once he noticed her staring. “I’m just here to tell you a story.”

She nodded and the television disappeared into the darkness again. The stranger pulled her even closer. “You see a really long time ago we did something really bad,” he whispered into her ear.

A really long time ago? She was doing bad stuff right now. Chrys nodded again. The stranger was very warm to the touch and when she leaned into him she could hear his quick heartbeat.

“So in each new lifetime really really bad stuff happens to us because, well, um, because there’s a part of us that deserves it. Forever.”

“That’s not…” she wasn’t sure what it was. She was getting sleepy again. Fair? That didn’t seem to matter here. Right? She didn’t know what happened so how could she know if it was right or not?

“But this time you have a chance to do the right thing,” he said soothingly. He even ran his fingers through her hair. “If you stay here everybody else can go. It would be nice to have a purpose again.”

What? She had no idea that cosmic monster locations were willing to negotiate but then, she hadn’t been thinking anything through properly lately. All of her plans rearranged the second someone else tried to take the credit.

She wasn’t just being reckless, she was being _stupid_. Magic didn’t have to obey anything it didn’t want to. What was the point of this? Or her? She should just agree with the grownup who said he knew better. For once. She’d have all the time she wanted to explore and she’d be saving the day. It had already been decided there was a wrongness about her, about her aura, that separated her from other people. Even things like Alcor noticed.

Maybe she was meant to wander rearranging spaces.

The man tapped gently at her shoulder. “Chrys-”

Now it was her turn to shush him. Chrysanthemum closed her eyes and plugged her ears. If it were her insides that were the problem then that’s what she needed to listen to. Not an alarmingly familiar shaped stranger.

What was her heart saying?

It was very difficult to hear.

What bubbled up from her soul was a high pitched terrible laugh. “Ha. HAHAHAHA. AHAHAHAHA. No!”

“I’m sorry could you repeat that please?”

“No,” she said again. It was easier this time. “I’m not giving up everything just for my dumb sibling!”

The blond man’s eye widened. “What? That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard. I told you-”

“No! It’s not even equivalent! I’m going to rescue everyone. Even Alcor! So there!” It hadn’t been true until the words burst out of her but once they existed in the air Chrys knew she never wanted to take them back. Sacrifices were supposed to be _meaningful_.

She changed her mind. She didn’t know this man. He wasn’t familiar or comfortable at all he was just too close to her. Chrys lept from his lap and he took a large step back into the dark space before her. 

“I don’t think you understand yet,” he said, standing up carefully. She took another step back but he took a larger one forward. With another step she hit a wall. “Maybe you aren’t seeing clearly.”

He pulled her up by her shirt collar, her back against the wall, his thumb against her eye and she knew (somehow she knew) exactly what he was going to do--. 

It was right when she cringed and prepared for the squish that Dorabella bit down on him.

The resulting movement loosened his grip enough for Chrys to slide away as the string connecting Dorabella to her belt loop came undone. The more the man shook the more momentum Dorabella had to let go and bite him again and again. Its teeth had not been that sharp when Chrys had found it in the piles of misplaced things.

She thought a thousand thank yous at Dorabella and ran as fast as she could away away away.

“Come back!” shouted the strange man with the familiar face. “You’re _wrong_! Come back!”

The world was full of swear words and she thought every one she knew as hard as she could.

When a door presented itself she opened it. Chrys was back in the lobby she’d started in. It still glittered gold and gaudy as she stared about it- each mirror reflecting back the sorry state she found herself in.

There was mercury on her shoes and blue burns running up her arms. The button on her cargo shorts had been bitten off by a demonic sheep. She had gold lines running up her pulse point and on to her face.

Visually the stage had already declared victory. All she needed was an uncomfortable dress and she’d look like another aspect of the theatre. So instead she wandered behind the concessions stand and tried to think about what it has actually said.

Alcor is a jerk with insomnia. Yes, she still understood that the stage was old enough to have Romans inside it so it had to be a bunch older than Alcor. It was angry with him, but it was still willing to kick him out to keep a twelve-year-old. It had even hauled out some negging nonsense to try and get her to stay. Why?

_It would be nice to have a purpose again._

What made a stage a stage? 

There was that feeling she got when Juniper performed. Like her breathe had been stolen and her brain had been captivated.

_You see the more people perform the more energy. The more energy the more a place comes to life._

Only If not for the audience it wouldn’t have been a performance. It would have just been more practicing. Preparing into infinity for a show no one could come to.

The stage wanted an audience to entertain way more than it wanted another actress or even to bother Alcor. That’s why it was rummaging through her books to entertain her when it could have just dropped her in a corner where no one would find her. Actors like Juniper were drawn to it but boring old watchers were harder to come by. Chrys was very good at watching. Except when she interrupted the scenes by being annoying, selfish, and difficult.

Well, being annoying and being selfish could both be talents if you practiced them long enough. Chrys cleared her throat. “Excuse me? Are you listening?” She felt goosebumps rising up and down her spine. That was as close as she was going to get to an agreement. “I give this show two out of five stars! AT MOST!”

Now Chrys was sure she heard a rumble from nowhere at all, as if she had struck it. One could argue she had. She stomped her foot impatiently. 

“I am firing the director and taking over this production! I want Alcor and Juniper and I want them now!” Before her mind could catch up and cripple her with uncertainty Chrys stormed back into the theater space. The skeletons all turned their heads to watch her stalk up and down the aisles. Nothing was happening yet, so more annoying! More high pitched. “WELL?~”

Juniper and Lord Alcor must have been resisting the stage’s call. They arrived disheveled and disheartened- Alcor was still the smaller size she’d seen flitting through hallways. 

“Chrys? What did you do?” Juniper still wrapped an arm around her but it was more carefully placed.

If Alcor’s wings had feathers they would have been ruffled. “Yes, please tell us exactly what you think you’re doing.”

“I think I know how to get it to show its heart. Lord Alcor? Could you wait in the wings please? You’ll know when your cue is called.” Alcor glared at her a long moment but he nodded when she stopped smiling so wide. The darkness at the side of the stage suited him. “And an audience. It won’t work without an audience. Juniper?”

Juniper took a seat in the front row. Now that Chrys was the one being bossy about the place it was time for a monologue. The old boundary broken she could simply lift herself on to the stage and place herself at its center. 

“Once Upon A Time there was, um, a stage.” A spotlight turned on and Chrys cringed in the sudden light. “It was made to entertain people in the before. Or maybe just mess with them? Before Alcor I mean. Maybe even before Shakespeare.”

Chrys felt her throat get tight but she coughed lightly to cover it. 

“It wanted to entertain people. It wanted to entertain me. But it’s done now. It must be very old and very tired to be twisting itself up like this. So it’s time to stop. It’s time for it to give me its heart.” The longer she spoke the more she could close her eyes and feel the large heart beating in her arms. It was heavy, soon she was brought to her knees supporting it. It smelled overwhelmingly of blood. “It’s okay,” she told it firmly. “It’s time to be done.”

Juniper gasped dutifully from the audience and the moment continued to be magic.

She was uncertain when Alcor had entered the scene but the moment his claws reached for the heart the whole world shuddered against her. Chrys nodded lightly and the claws began to cut against the tissue with a surgeon's steady hand. She made soothing noises as Alcor cut through unseen muscles, plaster and gold falling from the ceiling in shuddering breaths, the taste of blood against her tongue.

Alcor paused when they reached through the heart walls and into the chambers. “It doesn’t have to hurt.”

“Yes, it does,” said Chrys. Being unmade should hurt. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know the world around them was twisting like bones shifting inside her skin.

_Do you really want me to stop?_

“Yes,” she said again. “I’ve enjoyed the show. Really.”

The air around her lost all warmth and her arms were empty. She could already hear the roar of Atlanta traffic.

There was no more audience but Juniper clapped and clapped and clapped. 

This time Chrys didn’t fall asleep. This time she woke up and Alcor was there to catch her.

-

Hospitals were wonderful when you really needed them. It turned out that in proper reality getting burned, getting exposed to mercury, and getting your insides rearranged were all reasons to go to intensive care. Right away. In fact the malnutrition alone was enough to get several doctors excited.

They’d been seen in front of an abandoned building in Magical Atlanta and then, quite suddenly, deposited at the E.R. How odd.

“I don’t really remember what happened,” she found herself repeating this phrase over and over as her parents and the police crowded round her bedside. I don’t really remember. It was all a bit of a dream, you see. Do you have anymore jello?

Mom held tightly to Junipers arm as she slept peacefully. “It doesn’t matter what happened.”

“Though,” Dad whispered when he thought Chrys couldn’t hear. “We are grounding them.”

“Oh, naturally, darlin’. First we count our blessin’s then we give ‘em hell.”

Mostly she pretended to be asleep in her hospital bed. Mom and Dad made it very clear to all parties their girls had earned their rest.

It was Pamela who explained all the flowers and presents that came to crowd their room on the second day. “For you of course!”

“For me?” It was way more than she’d gotten on her birthday. 

“I think a few of these are for me, Pamela,” said Juniper. The I.V tube had gotten in the way of her hand eye coordination but she’d still made several flower crowns. It was better than trying to do homework.

Pamela smiled wide, though her eyes darted back and forth, prepared to excuse herself the moment Chry’s parents returned. “Oh, darlings, why didn’t you two tell me? It makes perfect sense with that aura and that silly bat. To think I had Mizar in my own home!”

What? “I’m not Mizar. Lord Alcor would be really upset if I started telling people that.”

“Of course, dear,” said Pamela, but she said it with a wink. 

Juniper didn’t help. She simply pulled her blanket over her head to hide the giggles.

If Chrys had nightmares for the rest of her life at least she knew why. “I’m not. I mean it!”

“Naturally.” Pamela pursed her lips. “Well, the magical community would still appreciate help from such an, let’s say, unusual little girl. Everyone with a hint of The Sight felt what you’re capable of.”

Her arms were too bandaged to open the letters but Juniper was willing to read them to her. 

The mermaid in the wheelchair had gotten her a tin of saltwater taffy. _There appears to be a curse on the botanical garden, will you find the source? I’d be so grateful._

The man with the pink beard had gotten her five crystals that reflected rainbows into the room. _Gnomes everywhere! Please help them to get other homes._

The voodoo woman had gotten her a new holophone. _Cultists. Yours. Do something._

“It would be dangerous to commit that kind of identity fraud, small fry,” said Juniper carefully. Lately she’d taken to staring at her sister when she thought Chrys wasn’t looking “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Chrys bit her lip. “I know. Don’t worry about it.”

If people wanted to believe she was an amazing intellectual heroine who could solve their problems in exchange for presents and favors that was their business. It would be cruel to take that away from them- especially if she really could help.

Of course Lord Alcor was a cruel sort of creature. On the third night in the hospital when she began to close her eyes for a real rest her pillow began to bleat. She shrieked at the sight of the black sheep but no one came to check on her. Juniper didn’t even open her eyes.

“You’re never going to stop making noises like that are you, kid?” asked Alcor, perched at the foot of her bed like a gargoyle in his full demon glory. She was almost certain his stars were shinier. 

She blinked rapidly while the demon sheep attempted to nuzzle her shoulder. “I didn’t summon you.”

“We still have a deal. I found a man who actually missed your company.” Alcor removed his hat and from it appeared her backpack and-

“Mmm here, puella!”

“Dorabella!” Chrys reached out her bandaged arms, the sheep repositioning itself to her lap, and held her skull close. “My hero. Thank you so much!”

There was a small part of her that thought taking out a reality squatting stage should have counted as a favor but it was a small part. A part she could ignore until he was farther away from her. Alcor with his golden stars and his bright blue flames. Still- “Lord Alcor?”

He didn’t glare exactly. Alcor simply had an expression that suggested you were wasting his time. “Now what?”

She took a deep breath. “What’s the deal with Duncan?”

“Duncan?”

“The demon before you. Who made the Sentient Stage. That’s why it was complaining about all this old stuff all the time. Why it had all your same kind of stuff without actually doing what you told it to,” she muttered. At the twist of his lip she continued in a big rush. “I just called him Duncan ‘cause the stage kept making you Macbeth. What exactly was that part?”

Just when she was sure Alcor was going to disappear in a huff and a puff of smoke he tilted himself in to his odd sort of grin. “Yes, Duncan. Duncan the Demon. Okay. Sounds like a great demon name to me.”

“But how-”

The sheep cut her off with another bleat while Alcor made a show of staring into his hat. “The demon before me isn’t particularly interesting. When I downsized him all his little plans went with him, but I suppose the theatre was strong enough to have its own identity.” He blinked rapidly at her. Maybe he was trying to wink. “Good news for the Wandering Shack.”

It’s own identity but no boss. No overarching purpose for some larger plan. Just smart enough to be creative but not free enough to do anything else. She wasn’t quite sure she could wrap her head around what that really meant. “It only really wanted an audience.”

“No,” said Alcor firmly. “If Bi- If Duncan made it then it was always meant to hurt people.”

Maybe Duncan wanted an audience too, but she wasn’t going to float that idea at this crowd. Instead Chrys placed Dorabella carefully on the nightstand with one arm and began to pet the sheep with the other. When it wasn’t running from her or biting her or making demon sounds it was a very soft creature. She smiled at it. “How about it, Baanquo? Do you want to stay with me tonight?”

“̸Don͠’̛t ͞r͡e҉na̢me ́m̡y̨ ̸sh̕eep.”

“Then don’t gender my skull!”

Alcor threw up his arms and disappeared, the hospital room was left only with the smell of pine to note his presence.

Chrys liked him better when he’d looked twelve.

Dorabella shook. “Now what?”

“I really do need to go to bed,” she said lightly. “I think I’m getting pretty good at it.”

Although…. There was a mirror she could see hanging from the door. There was also a very handy source of wool.

They looked like scars to her human eyes, the doctors had stitched them up and covered them with gauze, but with the wool she could see herself properly. What had once been yellow cracks against her skin had been glared into order- little bricks of gold that her foundation was now build on.

Chrysanthemum grinned.

-

Dipper always said Bill reincarnations were trouble. He had been proven right over and over again.

So no, there was nothing creepy about watching a little girl sleep. Or shifting her dreams a tad.

In her dreams Chrysanthemum Matsu wandered the Sentient Stage. He could plant a thought in her head. Something to keep her out of his way. _All the world’s a stage. How do you know you really won? Really. Things seem to be going fairly well for you lately._

He drew the curtains round her hospital bed and left her to her rest.


	7. The First Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chrys is not Queen of the Gnomes or Queen of the Roller Disco.

It was not a week after she was out of the hospital that Dipper was complaining about that American Girl again. Amaretto put another pin in his mouth so he wouldn’t be tempted to comment too much and tried to focus on the dress. It was going to be lovely if he could get the shape of it right. The silhouette was still too narrow.  


It would be much easier to concentrate if not for the hummingbird beating of demon wings. “She’s letting people think she’s you. I told you that, right?”

Amaretto tried attaching the lace to the underside of the skirt. “I am wonderful I’m told.”

“Just for beating a Sentient Stage! That was her fault in the first place.”

“Alcor-”

He was forgetting the proper shape of human faces and stretching himself out too far. “Not that I’m dwelling on anything-”

“Relax, Alcor,” said Amaretto soothingly, but then most everything sounded soothing in Sicilian. “Either she’ll be terrible at it and you can rescue her for another favor or she’ll be great at it and then-” He sighed. “Then I’ll handle it. Understand?”

“You never handle it,” Alcor muttered. After a moment or so he allowed himself to be drawn into the mortal plane and petted so that was good enough for now. Alcor’s moods had to be met with a certain level of humor.

–

In school there was an icebreaker game that everybody played. It was called “Two Truths and a Lie” and Chrysanthemum was reigning champ. When people shared things about themselves it was easy to pick out the things that didn’t fit. The trick was that most people tried to make the truth sound too outlandish to be real while the lie was something that seemed reasonable in comparison. When it was her turn Chrys always tried to make all three statements fit together so once people believed the first two statements they’d have trouble disbelieving the third.

Being Mizar was just letting people pick the wrong statement in the game. 

“I’m not Mizar, Alcor the Dreambender would be furious if he thought you were telling people I was Mizar, but it would be in your best interest to get my help. Promise.”

That was how she ended up in front of a shop in Magical Atlanta. A shop with very odd noises coming from inside. 

Luckily the shopkeeper seemed just as upset by this development as as she was. He pulled anxiously at his ears. “You see I came in today and it was, was a, like this. Can you do something about it?”

There was a banging noise and the shop window glass grew another crack. The blinds were drawn. Instead of focusing on any of that Chrys read the tilted sign on top. “You make shoes.”

The shopkeeper nodded curtly. “I make shoes for those with particular feet needs. A little confidence here, something for the claws there-”

“I’ll get the problem out of your shop. I want rollerblades.”

“Rollerblades?” Grownups were always making that face at her. The ‘what even are you on about now’ face. To his credit the shopkeeper hid it well. “You want rollerblades?” 

She’d started helping Teddy cheat on his math homework and in exchange he agreed to invite her to at least two of his boy/girl parties. The next boy/girl party was in a few weeks, Mom and Dad were still letting her go even under the current turbo grounding, but it was at a retro roller rink so the odds of her making a good impression on her own were statistically double not good. It turned out people her age weren’t really impressed with her current lifestyle of reality warping. They maybe might be impressed by- “Cool rollerblades.”

She held out her hand and the shopkeeper shook it carefully. Contract made.

If she didn’t think she could handle it Juniper, Pamela, and Dorabella were a few doors over poking at the wizard robes. Strictly speaking Pamela had agreed to be the responsible adult watching them while their parents were at work. They would help Chrys to retreat if she needed to.  Was this something Mizar was supposed to do? Alcor blocked most of her attempts to learn about him or the Pre-Transcendence world but she was pretty sure Mizar was a cult buster type not a negotiator. On the other hand Mizar was supposed to be active in the community. This could be her community if she got this right.

And Chrys really wanted those roller-blades.

With another imitation of a casual stretch she tip-toed into the shop.

Well, that was definitely a lot of gnomes. That was more than the usual amount certainly. Not to brag but to this point Chrys had led a comfortable gnome-less lifestyle and now her streak was broken. There were gnomes hanging from sparking wires on the ceiling, there were gnomes in the vents banging on the grates with their feet, and gnomes dancing to old pop songs blaring from the cloud.

Chrys cleared her throat. “Excuse me?”

A thousand little eyes glared in her direction. The one with the blue hat tugged at her sandal strap. “What?” he asked her. “Can’t you tell gnome zones when ya see ‘em?”

“I guess not,” she said carefully. Chrys bent down to meet the blue gnome’s gaze. “But I know for a fact this isn’t where you’re supposed to be.”

He kicked her big toe. It was mildly annoying. “You’re not the boss of us!”

“Also true. Who is then?” The thousand little eyes widened and then stared everywhere but her face. The one who’d been hanging from the ceiling wires waved at her. “You?” she frowned deeply. If she kept folding her bandaged arms and straightening her back everyone would mistake her for a real adult. “Well, you’re not doing a very good job. Gnomes are supposed to live in the countryside.”

“I know that,” he said. She reached out to pull him down but he shoved her hands away. The other gnomes began forming a circle around her she had to pretend not to notice. “But this place is real nice digs. Plenty of plants in the basement.”

She’d ask questions about the basement plants later. “Well all ya’ll can’t stay. That’s just how it is.”

It was a very tight circle they were forming actually. They were small and very jolly looking when they weren’t forming little clumps of activity. When they were invading her personal boundaries she could notice how very yellow their little teeth were. How mangy their beards. The head gnome stared at his nails. 

Well, strictly speaking she’d agreed to get the problem out of the shop. What happened next was not part of their deal. 

So she stuck out her tongue instead. “I’m not an ugly awful gnome with no place to go. I’m great. None of you have what it takes to beat me so why not just give up now?”

Chrys was a very good runner when the situation called for it and lately her whole life was just increasing situations. The gnomes all followed in waves. She hadn’t realized quite how many of them there were until they were chasing her. She also knew the police avoided Magical Atlanta whenever possible.

That meant that by the time she made it to the next block there were plenty of citizens watching the chase.

If only she had a plan.

She burst into the ice cream parlor and closed the door behind her with a solid thud but the gnomes knocked themselves inside anyway. Pamela and Juniper both jumped up to stand on their chairs, the chairs that now road the sea of little men despite themselves.

“Chrys!” shouted Juniper. Pamela gave her a dignified glare.

“Hello, Puella!” shouted Dorabella from the crook of Junipers shoulder. “How’d it go!”

“It’s going okay,” she assured all three of them, swimming up the stream of gnomes with teeth embedded into her foot. “This is about what I expected.”

She jumped over the other side of the counter to the employees only section, carefully of her arm casts. Chrys ran searching searching for- there!

Getting the enormous cooler door open required a great deal more upper body strength then she was used to. All the same she pushed it open and the gnomes when streaming inside. “No!” she shouted. She sounded pretty sincere. Her sister was an actress. “Don’t go in there!”  

“We said you’re not the boss of us!”

The steel door swung closed and once she clicked it shut the banging from the inside grew louder but uselessly so. The gnomes who hadn’t made it inside kicked the door tentatively. A few tried to stack themselves but she gently pulled them back down again.

From the inside the banging had stopped. Which meant they were eating all the ice cream inside. They’d be much easier to negotiate with once they were stuffed with sweets. Chrys wandered back into the main part of the ice cream parlor.

Juniper waved at her lightly. She’d already grabbed a broom to clean up. Even the pictures on the walls were knocked down.

The teenage vampire working at the counter when even paler in horror at the sight. It was probably the biggest mess she’d ever made. “What have you done? My boss is going to-”

“Don’t worry,” said Chrys with a grin. “I’m sure we can work out a deal.”


	8. Well Well Well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alcor bugs Chrys, Chrys meets an old woman with an impressive left hook, and a personal revelation is ignored entirely.

It was the vampire teenager, the one who helped out at the ice cream parlor, who told her about Georgia’s newest witch. Namely by getting cursed. “You gotta do something!” he whined at them as Chrys tried to enjoy a nice milkshake. He pointed repeatedly to his dull herbivore teeth. “I can’t eat like this!”

Juniper covered her neck with her hands. “I thought you didn’t eat people.”

“I don’t! That doesn’t mean I can go around with zebra teeth!” He sighed long and low. “The other vampires are gonna make fun of me.”

“You don’t have anything I want,” said Chrysanthemum. “I already paid four dollars for my milkshake.”

“Everything is the woo-oo-rst,” said the vampire. “I should have just given the creepy old lady some water. But I’m a _vampire_. The scariest thing in the woods at night should be _me_.”

“It’s okay, uh, friend,” said Juniper. She allowed him to rest his head on their table and then patted it. “Maybe we can get you some fake teeth. Better teeth. Sabertooth teeth.”

But Chrys had stopped listening at one detail. “Wait… which woods?”

*

It was odd for an Orthopedics Office to be located in the woods but it suited the sensibilities of Latisha Matsu. The commute was less than it appeared with modern technology, it was more convenient for the centaurs who often needed more work done on their extra bones, and it was peaceful. There was something to be said for serenity when someone was messing about with musculoskeletal structure.

This didn’t make it interesting. There was no reason for a witch to set up shop out there. If there was a witch out there she was being terribly rude to a member of the Matsu family- cursing potential clients. 

Chrys perched herself upside down on a chair in her mother’s office and complained. She was pretty good at it. If she was going to play at fairy tales she would need a proper send off. “I’m bored.”

“I told you that you would be bored,” said her Mom. “You said you wanted to come anyway. If you finished your book you can start in on your homework.”

“I already finished all my homework and read my book twice.” Well, all the homework that mattered. The homework for her Science Class was busy work and would make her stupider for doing it. All this junk about teaching the controversies of Magic like it was the 21st Century and nobody knew what happened when you put a werewolf on the moon. She could teach the class.

“Well, would you like to help my secretary sort the files? Plenty of interesting x-rays.”

Since she sort of became Mizar Chrys’s definition of interesting had gotten much pickier. “No.”

“Would you like to test the extra office chairs to see which one spins the best?”

“None of the chairs here spin as well as the ones Dad has. May I practice acupuncture on one of the patients?”

“No,” said her mother with a great dramatic sigh. She stood up, leaving her piles of paperwork behind, and went searching through the books on her shelves. Chrys had already read all the interesting anatomy text books, but maybe now her mother thought she was old enough to read them without sneaking about. She’d liked the figures of the flesh without the skin hiding it all away. Sometimes she imagined that having a body was like a dance of the seven veils and a good doctor’s job was to peel and peel, layer after layer, until they got to the important bit; the part you couldn’t see in any x-ray-

Her mother was a great surgeon. She’d never peeled anybody open. Chrys was being silly and picking at her Sentient Stage scars again. She had to stop before she opened one up and it started bleeding. In the Mindscape they glittered gold down her cheek but in the proper world it was just blood. 

Mom didn’t pull out an anatomy book. Instead she pulled out a small book about the flora and fauna of the area. “Bless your heart. How about you go into the forest and don’t come back until you’ve identified every kind of tree.” Mom smiled. “Or you get bored.”

Chrys smiled back. “I thought I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without adult supervision or Juniper anymore.”

Mom winked. “I’m hoping a little controlled trouble will keep you from doing something foolish. Stay on the path. Keep your phone’s GPS on. Wear your scarf.”

Parents were a nuisance but sometimes Chrysanthemum liked her mother. She even managed to pull off the rule of three before starting an adventure.

A kiss on the forehead, a red scarf around her neck, and she was off into the wilderness.

*

Georgia didn’t understand the concept of Winter well. Fall had lingered into December and only now did January try its hand at snow- leaving the forest green with freezing rain. The kudzu creeped higher and higher up the trees.

There were live oaks mostly _(Quercus virginiana)_ and spanish moss everywhere the kudzu left room. There were a few species of extinct pine that had forgotten they weren’t supposed to exist and grew straight and tall despite this fact. 

It was at the fork in the path that Chrysanthemum met a wolf.

“Wolves aren’t native to this region,” she informed it. She’d just read so in her book. The wolf blinked at her slowly.

“Neither are cheeky little girls,” said the wolf. It wasn’t the strangest thing to happen to her.

Still, she stuck her tongue out at it. “Have you always been able to speak?”

“No,” said the wolf. “I drank from a well and now I have things to say.”

With that comment out of the way the creature stretched with canine grace and went with a cocksure stride off the path into the soft moss.

Was she the sort of person to follow a wolf farther into the woods while wearing a bright red scarf? No, but Mizar would be. Chrys waited until it was almost out of sight before running after it. More interesting than sitting upside down in an office.

The well in question was deep in the woods. It looked like the sort of well Alcor would crawl out of if he wanted to scare a villager. In the old days when people didn’t even have holophones. If she wasn’t certain it was a setup _before_.

Sitting at the well was the oldest woman she’d ever seen. More wrinkles than skin. Her disproportionately large eyes gazed at Chrys pitifully. “Please child?” she asked. “Would you lift the water from the well? I’m too frail myself and I’m so very thirsty…”

Chrys stared at her as long as she could. The old woman didn’t blink once. For all the vampire’s moaning that didn’t make it scary in the least. This was fairy tale logic and that meant there were rules that couldn’t be broken. Rules based on behaving a certain way and math.

“Of course, grandmother,” said Chrysanthemum.

It wasn’t about doing what was right. It would be just as right to listen to her mother and not talk to strangers. But she had to be nice to the strange old lady. Then three things would happen. Then a reward. It was the barter system that got her rollerblades, mermaid shells, and gnome armies distilled to its essence. The only way it could be better is if they could shake on it before the scene began.

It was very heavy lifting. The old woman drank the whole pail. “Would you be a dear and get me another?”

“Of course, grandmother,” said Chrysanthemum.

The second time was harder but the script was the same. The old woman drank the whole pail. “Would you be a dear and get me another?”

“Of course, grandmother,” said Chrysanthemum.

The old woman drank more slowly this time. Solemnly she dropped the empty pail. “Would you be a dear and get me another?”

Now wait just a second! “You had three. Three.” 

“I’m still thirsty,” said the old woman. Now she blinked. If she had been Juniper’s age Chrys would have called it batting eyelashes.

“If you come back with me I can get you some coke from the vending machine.” Chrysanthemum scowled at her sternly. “But no more well water. It’s probably not sterilized. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

“Cruel child! To speak that way to your elder!” The woman stood. Her eyes darkened.

Chrys would be scared when she stopped being right. “Even demons have rules! You can’t just not have rules!”

That was when the old woman punched her in the face.

When she woke up again she was unharmed. Unbruised. Totally cursed.

The well was gone. Chrys stood up again, brushing the leaves from her back. “Wha-?”

A single bee flew from her throat at the sound. “Well!” she gasped instinctively, only for a wasp to wander out into the world. “She sells sea shells by the sea shore! Um, peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

She had to pull the worms out by hand. Otherwise once you got used to bugs crawling up your throat it wasn’t so bad. Just difficult in mixed company. She tested this new talent the whole walk back. 

*

Mom was suspicious of the sudden quiet the ride home. It took ages until Chrys could escape up to her room with Juniper to explain the new problem. 

Her sister caught on pretty quickly, throwing both her arms up in the air. “So, you’ve been cursed by a witch.”

“It happens!” said Dorabella from her place on Chrysanthemum’s bed.

“I’m not sure how this time.” Juniper pulled an ant out of Chrys’s eyebrow. “Dude, we’ve been going into those woods since Mom set up her practice and nothing that weird has ever happened.”

 _THAT WAS BEFORE!_ wrote Chrys as quickly as she could on her holophone. _I’m Mizar now, and that vampire knew about it, AND I invoked rule of three. She’s the one who broke the rules._

“Mm think they’re nice bugs.” Dorabella had two moths resting against the top of her. The glass eyes Chrys had added to her sockets pointed in two directions so Dor could watch them both.

_I’m hoping it’s temporary. Or until I learn a valuable lesson or grab a thing from a thing._

Juniper looked up at the stars on her side of the ceiling  “I wonder how long a teacher will accept vows of silence. Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

That’s right! The witch hadn’t just cursed Chrysanthemum she had gone and cursed her class participation grade! 

Chrys made a big show of putting on her nightgown and dramatically pulling the covers over her head. She was going to sleep and when she woke up the discount magic will have worn off.

(Had that ever worked? Insufficient data to say. Opinion: more problems should be solved by well timed naps.)

She could feel Juniper staring at her even with her eyes closed. “Maybe you should just say you’re sorry, small fry.”

Chrys shut her eyes even tighter and cuddled Dorabella close.

It was a long night. Apparently she talked in her sleep and Juniper slept soundly enough not to say. Small bugs for short syllables but still. By the time she was truly asleep morning arrived like a sledgehammer to the skull.

Her pillow was moving. Her pillow was buzzing. It was the bugs. Every bug she’d swatted away, every bug that had escaped yesterday, Alcor had returned every single bug to her in one enormous swarm.

Juniper screamed. That was fair. When Chrys screamed with her mosquitos the size of her fist came out. There were bugs all over the bed. Bugs beating themselves against the window to escape. Bugs beating at the lights with their bodies.

“What’s that buzzing noise? What’s that screaming? Juniper? CHRYS?” Their parents rushed to their room before Chrys could think of something to deter them.

Now everyone was screaming. Except Alcor. Somewhere out there Alcor was probably laughing.

*

Covered in lice-be-gone as she was Chrys almost missed the message in the mirror as she stepped out of the shower. DON’T TALK TO STRANGE WOMEN IN THE WOODS.

Months without speaking to her and that was what Alcor came up with? The silent treatment had frightened her, a shoe undropped, but now he was mocking her? 

She drew a very angry frowny face in the fog. Alcor drew a mosquito and labelled it with a chrysanthemum.

Skipping school due to a sudden infestation Chrys sulked in the kitchen. She texted the vampire. _I’m working on it._

He texted back surprisingly quickly for a sunshine hour. _No, worries! Just gave her wolf thing a 20 :) :) @ , . , @_

Twenty bucks? The witches of Atlanta took money but a fairy tale lady who wandered about in the woods?

No, this was wrong. This was iffy. She needed a second opinion and Mom was the one who lost the coin toss and had to stay home with the mysterious infestation. _Mom, am I_ curseable? Here to teach a valuable lesson? _….weird?_

Mom put on her glasses so she could squint down at the screen. “Why are you writing notes?”

Chrys shrugged rather than explaining. _Am I??_

“Oh, baby girl,” said Mom. She kissed the top of her daughter's head. “Yes. You are.”

Mom! 

She laughed. “Being different isn’t a bad thing. It’s mostly been a wonderful adventure with you as a daughter.” Chrys watched as her mother’s eyes glazed over slightly, the pen in her hand began to doodle in the margins of her notepad. “There was the time when you were seven and you tried to make yourself an extra eye socket with a hammer. That took a decade off my life I’ll tell you what. Running off and getting put in the hospital, that will not be happening again. But mostly you’re clever and interesting to have around.”

Chrys remembered the hammer incident. She’d just felt like there was so much more to see. Juniper had soothed her by covering her with googly eyes. _Thanks, Mom._

“You’ve always been a little… lopsided let’s say. We always figured it was part of being a twin.”

“What?!” said Chrys. She caught the bee and squashed it before Mom could see.

Mom looked at her, really looked at, the searching expression that usually came before Chrys got in trouble. “Didn’t we tell you that?

Chrys nodded her no as intently as she could and Latisha Matsu frowned carefully. “Well, when you were born we thought you were going to have a brother. But when he was born he had the cord- it’s not important anymore since we have you. Lopsided is- It’s just a morbid little joke your father and I have. You’re not incomplete. Don’t ever think that.”

She couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t go back up to her room because there was a bug bomb up there. She went outside to sit where they buried the guts in the garden.

That was strange. (What would she do with a brother? Would Juniper have her own room? Would he care about the bugs?) That was not helpful! (Would people invite him to parties when they didn’t have to? Would he invite her along too? Would he have been stupid? Or would she be less smart?) Except-

A fairy tale about twins was different than a fairy tale about girls going into the woods alone. There had to be the good twin and there had to be the bad twin.

The good kid went first and got a reward. The bad kid tried to mimic them and got cursed for it. There was no good kid to go first. It messed up the balance.

It made failing a little easier some how. She would try the suggestion from the sibling she actually had.

Gross. An apology.

*

It was hard to convince her mother to take her into work again without words but that’s okay. She managed. It was amazing what a sideways pep talk and Alcor’s disapproval could do to her determination.

He wouldn’t even talk to her? Fine. She didn’t need to talk to Alcor to be a magnificent Mizar. She was altruistic and brave and as long as she insisted on these facts in the privacy of her own head no one could argue with her.

Now she knew why he hated her anyway. Mr. Twin Souls knew she was operating at 50%. She was supposed to be a twin. (Mom said he would have been named Christopher. Weird. She wasn’t going to bring it up if Alcor wasn’t. It was a very big thought and it took up too much room in her head. A piece of meat she couldn’t chew and swallow- so instead had to be spat out entirely.)

She just had to be the good twin. It was sort of like being a good sister but with less room to breathe.

The well was gone. It was the forest of her childhood again and not a fairytale at all. Still she sat cross legged in the clearing where the well wasn’t and spoke- so softly that the millipedes crawled discretely down her chin. “It’s a very well designed curse you know.”

“I’ve been having an interesting life lately and I’ve never seen anything like it. Long lasting. At first I figured you were some kind of con artist. I still do, you don’t play by the proper rules and you’d take money to uncurse me, but you’re still talented at stuff. And theatrical! Theatrical is a big deal!”

Ugh, she needed to stay away from exclamation points. That was a stink bug. Something was listening to her very carefully.

“The point is I like you. And the world is full of witches now. I think maybe somebody this good at stuff ought to be paid mo

re than a random twenty. I wrote to my voodoo lady about you and she says she’d give you a job if you wanted.” The voodoo woman owed her after she’d gotten rid of that cult. “You don’t have to. But they have oak trees in Atlanta.”

The woman who stepped out from the branches of a tree was much younger than the one she’d spoken to before, but she was still a grown up. Same disproportion eyes. Enough muscle to explain a knock out punch; enough magic to explain why she hadn’t got any bruises from it. Following close behind was a small pug. So much for wolves. “I didn’t want to give you a reward because you have the aura of the evil eye, kid.”

“Really?” That was so much more specific than what folks usually told her. Getting herself a wood witch was paying off already.

“You’re being followed by a powerful demon.”

Ugh. “I knew that.”

“You need to stop picking at yourself or it’ll get worse with your hormones.”

Chrys wrinkled her nose. “You’re the one who left hooked me. Come on.”

The woman followed carefully, one hand holding tightly to the end of Chrysanthemum’s scarf, the other cradling her dog.  “Not the dumbest thing I ever done.”

Fairy Tales were only interesting when you were the one writing them.

But next time she was this great there needed to be more people around to appreciate it. Honestly.


	9. A Moment with Mizar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Amaretto is not a mobster, a mannequin, or a macchiato enthusiast.

The thing that confused him most about the English was their insistence on giving him coffee. **  
**

Never just a cup of the black either. They would haul out large machines with fancy dials attached to make sure the Italian had the quality of coffee he was accustomed to. It didn’t matter how sincerely he would thank them for a simple glass of water. It didn’t matter when he explained to them that fancy coffee was a vice of Northern Italy and he was from the South. A brilliant young intern would be instructed to make him something with a long name. Even when they worked for him they would take it upon themselves to try.

Amaretto could not fault a person for trying.

On the bright side if not for the large brass coffee machine Amaretto would have nothing to fight the horde of living mannequins now overrunning the studio. Hopefully they would be sensitive to burns. At least three of them, armed with scissors and hot glue guns, were reaching through his protective furniture wall. 

So ungrateful. He’d gotten the nice mannequins too. With the ball joints for mobility. A mobility they were now using for a wee bit of a riot.

Sarah the Intern was hiding under her drawing desk. One mannequin reached out to grab her but Bandoni blasted it with the fire extinguisher. 

The leader of the horde had Sapienti strung up on the ceiling with tulle- she was due to fall any minute. Four more were simply ripping apart anything they could get their hands on. There was one in the mirror hall having some sort of existential crisis. It had no mouth to scream with the poor bastard.

It was a usual sort of problem. Though it was less unusual for him than it might have been otherwise. Amaretto fished through his pockets for an Alcor summoning circle. When one could not be found he improvised.

Dipper disliked being summoned by a circle made of whipped cream. “Man, we talked about this,” said Dipper. He licked his own sleeve and sighed lightly. “I’m going to be sticky now.”

“My bad, divo,” said Amaretto. Two of the horde worked to throw his desk aside. “Just a mild situation here. Usual terms for your help please?”

A handshake and his demonic other half had his blue flames burning bright.

“Please don’t damage the dresses!” They needed them finished for Paris in two weeks.

“I don’t really like that one.” Dipper hurled the mannequin dressed in plastic and blue silk into a wall before it could bash his head in with a chair. “How is she going to sit down?”

“High fashion doesn’t care if anyone’s comfortable.” But when this show was over he’d have the notoriety to get the trust, to get the money, to pay off the loan to open up another store. A store full of local artists who deserved a chance to make people feel like their clothing could reflect who they are. 

Amaretto covered Dippers back and they pushed forward through the studio. It was almost as fun as a nice mosh pit. Less biting. 

“The leader! We have to get the leader!” Dipper was already floating up to face them, Sapienti struggling uselessly in her spider snare. The lead mannequin was shooting strings of hot glue in every direction. Very wasteful.

Amaretto yelled, a distraction, the lead mannequin turned its head-

\- and Dipper burned it into pieces.

The faceless bodies all hit the floor with a final- thud. Dipper lazily floated back to the floor as the designers carefully came out of their hiding places.

If they weren’t capable of handling this sort of thing he wouldn’t have hired them.

“Well they weren’t possessed. Just enchanted. Know anyone who would want to enchant your things?” Dipper stretched his spine before giving up and flopping himself against his brothers head. 

Amaretto very carefully stared at Sarah the Intern until she began to pick at the ends of her scarf. “Sarah,” he said gently. “Is there something you want to tell us?”

The words burst out of her with the slightest pressure. “I didn’t do it on purpose! I mean how did you know?”

Amaretto had cameras in every corner of his Magical communities. Alcor had given him the idea with his scattering of stars. He gave Sarah a tight smile and a quick wink. “I had a feeling.”

“Her boyfriend is just the worst! And I can’t get her to leave him, or admit he’s the worst, or anything! So I thought if I could just give her one night to feel good about herself again…”

“I understand-”

“I think he might be some kind of wizard! So I thought to myself, oi! I can wizard right back!” At this she burst into tears and Amaretto had no choice but to hug her. 

He was wonderful at hugs. It was because he was short and very warm to the touch.

“Next time try to remember you can’t play Cinderella around the High Fashion. It gets angry.” He snapped for Sapienti who materialized at his side with notepad in hand to take down all the information they needed on this “boyfriend”. Something to be handled tonight. When Sarah’s sobs turned into hiccups he got her a cup of coffee. The machine was only slightly dented.

With that done, hm. Dipper still needed his payment and Amaretto had been itching to add new cufflinks to his suit. He pulled his brother into the office.

The fashion world changed so fast. One moment a design was classic and the next it was too dated to be taken seriously. There were so many ways Dipper Pines was left behind by the world. Amaretto could do something about the clothing. Just rearrange the cut of the collar. Add a few more stars to the inner lining.

“You don’t have to change the whole thing,” said Dipper, blessedly in the mother tongue. 

Amaretto bopped him on the nose so he’d stop squirming. “Just let me handle it.”

Silly demons.

*

London was lovely at night. When walking through its magical portions the city seemed to be aware of Amarettos aesthetic needs, sending curls of fog against the bottom of his trench coat.

It was too cloudy to see the stars. This also seemed significant.

Bandoni and Sapienti walked two paces behind him dragging the luggage with them. 

When they got to the pier the luggage was opened and the boyfriend was pulled to his feet.

“Hello! I’m sorry about all this. I know the kidnapping doesn’t set the right tone.” When the boyfriend began to swear Bandoni cracked his knuckles but Amaretto only laughed. “Please, pardon my English. It’s not an easy language.”

“Where?” began the boyfriend. “What-,” he tried again before settling on a simple “Who’re you?”

“I’m Amaretto and these are my best friends Sapienti and Bandoni. You see, we’ve done our research on you and, well, how to put this delicately-”

“You seem to enjoy beating up people who are weaker than you,” said Sapienti.

“Animals too. Not a very picky guy,” said Bandoni.

“Normally we’d let the police handle this sort of thing. Only, you’ve gone out of your way to harass members of the supernatural community.” Amaretto tapped him on the forehead. “That’s our area in particular. Our family.”

The boyfriend listened to their accents and scowled. “Are you guys… mobsters? Am I being recruited for the mob?”

Of course not. The Mafia talked a great deal about family but they were incapable of love. 

“No,” said Sapienti. “You’re not being recruited.”

The boyfriend tried to take a step backwards but they held him in place.

“I don’t hurt people, silly. We try to keep our people safe. I, ah, would go so far as to say I love all of humanity!” That was what being Mizar meant to him. It was carving out communities where everyone was a family and everyone was happy. Amaretto smiled thinking of the places he was collecting. It twisted itself into a frown again when he thought of things like… this. “But I also believe,” he said softly. “That when you do awful things to other people you forfeit your right to humanity. Do you understand what I mean?”

“No!” said the boyfriend. But it was already too late. It was all the explanation he was going to get.

The silencer on the gun was enhanced with magic. No one heard anything other the sounds of the city.

The body would wash up to shore a month later; nameless and formless.

That was not to say everything went according to plan. Amaretto shook his fingers. “What sort of weapon was that? That had to be one of the worst guns I’ve ever held. The recoil almost broke my wrist.”

Bandoni had a laugh like a cathedral bell. It rang loud through the streets as they walked back home. It was the same laugh he’d used when Amaretto was seventeen and had bedazzled his knife collection.  “Do you know how hard it is to get a gun in this country at all?”

“Hmm. You just have to be pragmatic,” said Sapienti. Sapienti had forgotten more information than her boys would ever know.

“I hadn’t really- oh dear!” Amaretto struggled for his holophone. “I forgot about- ugh. One moment. I have a business call to make. What time is it in the North America?”

“The Prime Minister says he never wants to speak to you again. He says he doesn’t care what’s growing out of his head. He says he will build a gulag and throw you in it if you step foot in Cana-”

Amaretto waved his hand again. “No, I mean the States parts. Georgia?”

“About seven?”

He gave his duo their ‘good job!!’ stickers and ducked into the privacy of the first open cafe he could find.

The holophone did not ring for long. “Hello. This is Matsu.”

“Mr. Matsu!” Amaretto threw one arm out instinctively. If Dipper were here he would put his hand in his hands and remind his brother that body language is not relevant in a phone conversation. Instead the woman working the counter only looked up from her magazine a moment before returning to her article and Amaretto could wave as he pleased.

“Oh! I mean, um, Mr. Amaretto.” There was the sound of shuffling papers. A chair squeaking into place. “I’m sorry I must have written the wrong number down. How are you?”

“Wonderful, wonderful don’t worry about that. I always use multiple phones to keep conversations exciting. Has my loan gone through?”

Matsu was careful not to breathe too heavily into the phone “I was going to call you in the morning, but, I mean- yes. We’ve approved your international loan at this time.” Something was clicking along in the background. A computer Amaretto assumed. “There’s still a great deal of paperwork to-”

“Of course of course don’t worry about that. You skipped the part with the great news!” Oh drat, had he gotten blood on his leather shoes? That could be unfortunate. Another good reason for phone calls over video feeds.

“Congratulations, Mr. Amaretto,” said Matsu. He might have been smiling. “I look forward to seeing you soon.

“And you, Mr. Matsu,” said Amaretto. If they were in person this is the part where he would put a comforting hand on the older man’s shoulder.

Without this reassurance Mr. Matsu only sighed. “I’ll get the coffee machine ready.”

He hung up before Amaretto could tell him not to. Yes, people from English speaking countries were very insistent on their coffee. It was early enough in the morning now that he might be tempted to have some anyway.

There was still so much to do. The fashion show in Paris, setting up a permanent network in London so things would stay safe while he was away, fix his shoes. Not to mention his time with Alcor, doing the work for the world Dipper was comfortable with. His brother was always a little uncomfortable with how much more efficiently Amaretto protected the world compared to Mizar’s of the past.

Atlanta would have to wait for now. But it wouldn’t wait forever. He’d promised to handle the situation there.

It was always nice to make new friends.


End file.
